IDE Auto Detect Not Recognising Drive

[Retired1998]

Recently the hard drive on my Windows 98 system went AWOL !
It was not recognised by the BIOS at start-up. The BIOS "Auto Detect Hard Discs" failed (i.e. NONE) and when I tried to re-create the MBR via FDISK (from a Windows 98 Start Up Disc) the message “no discs installed” came up.

I was lucky to find a friend of a friend in the IT business who hurriedly type in something and pressed Enter, at Boot Up, before the initial BIOS screen appeared. I could not see what he typed and he refused to tell me what it was (not surprising really).

Any way, the problem was cured, the disc was recognised and Windows 98 loaded normally and since then everything has been OK.

Any ideas ? I am dying to know what was typed during the POST test.

Thank you

 

[wolluf]

Most odd - why did he refuse to tell you what he had done? You say not surprising - I couldn't disagree more. But if its now ok - presume there wasn't a hardware problem - so he may just have set the the bios to autodetect the drive (ie, he went into bios settings).

Still - if its working.....

 

[Retired1998]

Wolluf,

The reason he would not reveal what he had done was that he normally charges for his work and he was doing me a free favour ! I guess he regarded it as a trade secret ? However, I repeat, The BIOS autodetect refused to detect the hard drive and he did not go into the BIOS, as I saw him working on a blank screen only with flashing cursor ... Since I posted it the problem has occured again ! and I am waiting for him to call. If he does I will make sure that I watch him more closely !!! If I gain any info I will post it here. Thanks.

 

[mainegeek]

Maybe if he actually new what he was doing he wouldn't have had to hide it and he would have identified the "Real" problem from the start?

 

[erikcamacho]

Since it sounds as though your running Win98, I would assume that you have older hardware, which of course I could be totally wrong, but most likley am not.
To fix your problem I would first look into flashing your bios on your motherboard and if you got a new harddrive you may need to set it to run on 15 cylinders instead of 16 to get your bios to identify the drive. This is assuming that you have older hardware with a newer harddrive.

Hope this helps,

Erik

 

[Retired1998]

Thanks to all who responded ... I now regard the problem as closed ... It appears that I had an intermitant hard drive power up problem. I have since installed a new hard drive and imaged across from the old one. Thanks again.