BOOT (BIOS?) Problem

[TopHat2]

I do a little bit of computer repairs . I had just install Win ME, MS Word, and Excel 2000, on an old Cyrex machine with 2 HDD’s, every thing seemed to check out OK, it had been booted several times in the process of installing software.
Then disaster struck. I installed PC-cillin 2000, when it rebooted it ran SCANDISKW reporting an incorrect shut down, I cancelled out of SCANDISK and rebooted, going into the BIOS (AMI ver 05.05 15.07.95), and seting the 1st boot drive to Floppy (I had set it to the CD to install ME).

When I tried to reboot I’t wouldn’t giving “Pri Master HDD Error”, a string
51-0505-001437-00111111-071595-M1531/43-001_10_-H
appeares at the bottom of the screen.

I tried:
Re-detecting the HHD’s in BIOS.
Numeous combinations of boot devices.

Then I removed the second HDD (D the machine booted into ME the first time, I went into BIOS and auto detected the HDD just to be sure the BIOS knew this was my primary boot disk. When I rebooted I got the same error message “Pri Master HDD Error”

I had saved a copy of the CMOS settings to floppy and restored this. The PC booted into ME, I shut down and rebooted “Pri Master HDD Error” I also noticed the srring;
51-0505-001437-00111111-071595-M1531/43-001_10_-H
at the bottom of the screen?

At the moment the first boot device is set to Floppy , the second to IDE-0, the third to CDROM.

The PC will not boot to either the floppy or hard drive (I haven’t tryd the CD yet).

It gets stranger!
1). I now soft boot with CTRL-ALT-DEL, the PC boots into the floppy (win98 ver 4.10 I don’t have an ME boot disk) I take the floppy out and soft boot again, I get the message

Searching boot record from floppy..not found
Searching boot record from IDE-0..OK

Then theME splash screen, then the above message again.

Then a blank screen, then the same message, another blank screen, the same message, and finall it boots into ME, if I restart ME from the shut down menu it will boot back to ME, but only after 3 iterations of the above message. If I shut down and power off nad try to boot back to C:, I am back to “Pri Master HDD Error” again

2). Second experiment. I try to boot to C: get HDD error, warm boot, and it boots to ME, but with iterations of;

Searching boot record from floppy..not found
Searching boot record from IDE-0..OK

3). If I just keep shutting down normally the machine will not boot. Sorry for the long saga. I have been up all night, trying to solve his problem, can any one please help?

Regards, Les.

 

[Guest_imported]

Hmm, very strange... I take it you can verify the floppy boot disk you're using, is 100 per cent virus free. Remove any unnecessary drives (CD-ROM, CD-WRITER, ZIP, etc) and any add-in cards other than your video, so you end up with the most basic of machines. Did that help? Make a note of CMOS settings, switch off, move the "CLEAR CMOS" jumper (if you have one), and REMOVE the battery. Replace after a few seconds, boot up and put in required params. If that makes no difference, as a computer technician you may well have another unused hard disk floating around with say Windows NT4 on it. Connect this up in place of the existing hard disk(s), and see if it will boot. This will hopefully point to which bit of the system is not working correctly.

Good luck!

ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[bugeyesbob]

Also not wishing to teach you to suck eggs but here are a few other rather seemingly obvious pointers that can be easily overlooked...

1. Is the cable secure...? When cold it may not connect but will when warm through expansion... Check the cable is not damaged...
2. Do you have S.M.A.R.T. switched on in the bios...? If so switch it off and see if it gives the same error at the bottom of the screen...
3. Tried fdisk /mbr...? I do not know how pc-cillin installs but a logical guess would be that the errors occured after installation and it may have over ridden the boot sectors so it is booted before windoze... Which leads on to the fact that the hdd error you mention is sometimes given if the drive has not been partitioned/formatted...
4. A plus point here...
"Searching boot record from floppy..not found" & "Searching boot record from IDE-0..OK" plus the alternating screens are normal... ;=)
5. A long shot here but it works with windoze 98/se... Was the antivirus switched off in the bios when you installed...?
6. Also if the pc is not booting at all but providing the lights are all on and there is a fan noise again check ALL components are seated correctly namely the proccesor...if that is all ok then the only other thing left really is the bios...is it doing its job...? But to tell you the truth virus behaviour can also cause this as pointed out in the above post...
7. Keep smiling... Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.