Hard Drive disappeared from BIOS - PC cannot boot

[SSttuu]

what would cause the HD (C to disappear from the the computer BIOS.? PC is 1 yr old, used for work only. NAV2003 has been running and was updated today. All of the MS Win 98 updates that were applicable to the machine were installed today - and all worked fine. During a re-boot to get VIA BIOS info, the boot cycle stopped and only my D: drive was listed (CDROM); the Hard drive - primary master was gone. I checked the BIOS and tried to get it to manually find the HD, but no luck.
The PC would not boot from either the CDROM Windows 98 disc or the startup floppy, even tho the floppy is set to boot from first (HD - 2nd and CDROM - 3rd).
Would it be a loose connection on the HD, or a Power supply issue, or a WIN 98 issue or what??
Unfortunately the PC is at work - not home where i am now, so I do not have access to BIOS or MoBo specifics.
I hope someone has a suggestion for a starting point for me.

 

[KimberTech]

I would look at hardware first.
Has the system been physically moved ?
Something could be loose.
Set the bios to boot from the floppy first, and see if you can boot to the boot disk.
If not, you have to start looking at hardware problems.

Kimber

The more I learn,I realize how much more there is to know!

 

[WeeGeordie]

Sounds like poorly seated cables. Try reseating them, at BOTH ends. Your hard drive should have a label on it that gives the CYL/HEADS/SECTORS info which you can manually type into the BIOS setup panel. I have 2 drives in my system, one which is found automatically, the other I have to enter the parameters myself.

Good luck ...wee

 

[PeaceThruJesus]

Hi, i am new here and not that experienced inside a pc, and hope someone can help here. A friend of mine has an older pc (95?), and a visitng friend from out of state tried to update it with larger HD, but someting went wrong and it appeard it caught a virus. I have it now and ran a norton rescue disk and antivirus program. on a floppy and sure enough it found and removed the infamous (or so i read) NYB virus in the boot sector.

But what happened on the next boot up was that it went so far as to flash the win98 screen, but then alerted me that the date was wrong, 2094 (the month and day were fine). so i changed it to 2003 and hit enter. But the next screen flashed "cmos checksum error" and after that it could and cannot detect any hard disks at all. When i boot up i can hear the HD going but then it says "Boot Disk Error", Insert Sys. Disk.
Doing that informs me that Win98 has detected that drive c does not contain a valid FAT or Fat32 parition,and running fdisk brings up "no fixed disk present." I have loaded bios and setup defaults to no avail.
So i took a working hard drive from a like - older pc and placed it in the problem one, but the same "Boot Disk Error" came up. I now have it running as a slave drive in this pc, and all the programs (and no viruses) are there. Fdisk shows 2 partitions.

Could it be the battery? Norton said it got the virus and initially i did get a windows screen.
Could changing the date affect it? Since then i went into cmos setup and changed the date there to 1998 because it would not keep 2003.
Below the Hard disks info it all reads none (Primary Master, etc. But IDE HDD Auto Detection shows1703 under "size" for primary master and 0 for primary slave when i run autodetect. All of which changed nothing as far as the problem is concerned.
Somewhere along the line i tried to run safe mode but is said windows\himem.sys; dblbuff.sys; and ifshlp.sys were missing.
Thank u 4 your help in cyberspace,

 

[KimberTech]

It sounds to me like you have a couple of things going on.
Your bios is not keeping settings? Make sure there is no diskette in the drive when you are booting to hard disk.

If you are not experienced inside a PC.....do you think maybe you should take it to a hardware technician to be looked at?

If you can access what is on drive, copy out what you need to save.

If you are running it as a slave on another system, go to

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

or another online virus scan and check the drives.

Set the bios to manual for the drive, and enter the settings found on the drive itself. Make sure the jumper settings are correct on all the drives, and that they are plugged in properly to the mainboard.

If you are familiar with an fdisk and OS reload that is what I would do in your situation.

**NYB virus infects systems by booting from a floppy diskette, and so make sure you scan all your diskettes with updated antivirus after you finish.

Good Luck! Kimber

The more I learn,I realize how much more there is to know!

 

[DantheSaxman]

Unplug your Pc and open up the case. Unplug the power connector from your hard drive. Normally, it should be somewhat difficult to remove this plug. If it pulls out easily, the female pins in the plug from the power supply may be losing contact. You can use a probe to close down the connectors a little so that they make better contact with the hard drive. I've run into this more than once.

 

[PeaceThruJesus]

Thank you, KimberTech and DantheSaxman for your replies: I have it running now as a second HD in this pc, and i have run the latest AVG antivirus on the drive (as well as habving scaned the boot disk)with a clean bill of health, except that sacndisk found 2 bad sectors in one of the partitions and fixed them. And i have loaded all the contents into a special folder on this pc for copying to a CD.
I am familar with fdsik and clean installs but i do not think the prob. is with the HD or it's contents but with the cmos and it's memory, as it will not run any HD right now. As for setting the bios to maual, I have not found anywhat to set the detect to manual, i find no way of doing that in this old award bios in none of the categories.

The power connection is tight, and i even tried using the other identical power connector with no different effect.

It looks like i will be attempting to clear the cmos. As for a professional tech, it will not be worth it on this old pc (90mhz; 64 ram; 1:6 GB HD) with so many other needs out there, and besides i want to learn more and believe that by the grace of God we can fix it.
Thank you much for your help so far.

 

[PeaceThruJesus]

JUst wantede to tell you all that (the day after the abobe post) after more prayerful research (i was unfamilar with all the cmos details) and preseverance it seemed like the prob. could be in the IDE HD detect, I had been there before, but evidently never had it rightly detect or perhaps save the settings.
How it got the way it was was related to the boot sector virus i took out as well as what follows. On the next boot up, after the first windows screen, it came up with a dialogue box telling me that the date - 2094 - was wrong, with an option to change it. That i did to 2003, but on next boot up stopped with a screen, "year 2000 detect and correct" from the the learning company , "No corrective action required." and then a C:\Y2KDC prompt. Typing things like setup or enter did nothing,and booting up again was a dead end. After having going back in cmos and having no success in trying to change the date there to before or after year 2000 (it still would only boot as far as the above stop) and trying to go in safe mode, i put the date in cmos at 1999 and i put the start up disk in and choose 1, and reinstalled windows (95). It reinstalled fine and booted into windows successfully at about 1AM. Thanks b 2 God!
After that, when trying to get the date to 203 again, it received a "cmos checksum error" and again the HDD was gone and i had to run the autodetect and save it, and all was fine after that. The only hitch is that the date monitor cames on during just before windows finally opens and wants me to correct the date. Correting it will not solve the problem and with no fix i just choose to not correct it and goes on ot load/work fine (except norton scan disk wants to correct all the "improper dates" if you run it).
I have since found out that AwardBIOS released between 26 April 1994 and 31 May 1995 (his was 1-26-95) was unique in this problems of y2k changeover.
All is fine now, but I have been looking for a free fix, but award and others have discontinued it (a fix from

http://www.walkerj.muc.de/

is beyond mev right now).
Thanks be to God and thank you whoever tried to help as well.


daniel

 

[jdjonee]

my pc won't recognize the floppy drive or the hard drive or the cdrom it keeps looking for the "pxe" what do i do i have a dell optiplex g1 running win 98 se now i have nothing from a regular reboot. please advise.