Hard Drive will not boot -- with a twist

[babbjon]

Recently my C: drive became infected with the W95.Spaces virus. I spent several days booting from an emergency floppy running Norton Virus scans to remove/repair all the infected files. When I was finished, the drive wouldn't boot. It simply returns a NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR
message.

I can still boot from the floppy and see all the data on C. I have repaired (?) the MBR with fdisk /MBR. I have restored the boot sector and even compared it to my wife's to make sure it looks fairly reasonable.

I then got a new hard drive, formatted it clean, and installed it as the Master hard drive. It wouldn't
boot. Same error. I reformated again. Same thing.

I can put the drives on in any configuration (either as C or one by itself) and neither one will boot.
But, I can view ALL data if I boot from a floppy.
(But cannot start Windows).

Any ideas? Since a brand new drive had the exact same problem, it sounds like a hardware or CMOS problem...but
since all the data transferring seems to work fine...

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[edfair]

There are some virii that will infect the boot sector, then when you boot from the floppy to get it up the virus infects the floppy, and you are in the tank.
You may want to try reformatting with a known good floppy after short time with power off.
The failing to start windows is also a clue.
You may also want to check your wife's machine for virus activity. But don't do it with anything that has been on your machine. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Wirdo]

Your missing the sys files prob that windows needs to see in order to recognize the drive. Try booting with a boot disk and type in sys c: at the a prompt. That should copy the needed files to boot your drive. But, if it is a virus prob still it may not work.

 

[babbjon]

The boot disk I am using (the floppy) is write-protected.
I will scan it when I get home (from a clean machine),
but I think it is clean.

I looked for the major booting sys files...like io.sys,
ms-dos.sys, drvspace.bin...and one other that escapes me
at the moment.

I have run sys c: from the bootable floppy. It says the
system is installed, but still won't boot.

I'll try virus scans tonight..and an attempt to reinstall
Win98 maybe... i've run out of ideas.
The disk is "new" though, so I can reformat as much
as I want.

 

[Wirdo]

Reformatting or repartitioning the drive wont affect the boot sector. Try using a separate system to create a bootable floppy disk and copy the FDISK file to it. Boot to the damaged system from the boot floppy. Enter FDISK /MBR from the clean disk. Your prob may have been the sys you made the disk on was infected allready and/or the virus has corrupted you anti-virus program and it cant detect the problem. Im not saying reformat wont fix just that it wont effect the MBR.

 

[edfair]

Your system files are msdos.sys io.sys, command.com, and drivespc.
Do your /mbr after a power off for 30 seconds. Even pull the plug to insure no memory holdover. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Jborth]

I had this problem with all 5 of my computers after some virus outbreak. All of the drives would fail to boot after reformatting, repartitioning etc. Finally, I used each repective manufaturers utility disks to write 1's an 0's to the beginning and end of the drive. This solved the problem on each one.

 

[edfair]

jborth,
You had a boot sector virus that moved the good boot to a spot on the diagnostic cylinder.
Low level and reload may have been extreme but it surely got rid of them.
There was probably a fix tool for it, and an alternative was norton utilities and overwrite the boot sector, then do a sys c: from a clean floppy reboot.

But that is all 100% hindsight to mention it now. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[ockerb]

Just another thought while scanning through these posts, have you checked to see if your partition has been made active? The os will not boot on an inactive partition. If you dont know how to check, run fdisk and (from memory) I think it is #2 on the menu. Make partition active.
Maybe this might help

 

[TinWeasle]

ockerb has something... If none of the partitions is made active, they won't boot. Also, does your BIOS need to be shown the new drive? Some older (I'm talking a whopping 2 years or more old) BIOS need to be run and manually told to autodetect hard disks before it can see them to boot from. You may also want to check master/slave settings on the IDE chain, but I think the order would be:
1- Check for active partition
2- Check for BIOS detection (Basic CMOS setup should show what is installed on what part of the IDE chain, i.e., PriMaster = USER (drive data))
If both drives don't show in BIOS, then you have a master/slave contention. Check jumpers on the drives.

TinWeasle
Avoiding Responsibility since 1984.
Remember, my opinion is only worth the phosphorus it's printed on.