Problems wih a hard drive, or not??

[Guest_imported]

I have a 4 Gb Samsung hdd with windows 98 installed on it. The problem is that the system does not start, giving me an error after the memory test (i have test it on a PentiumII and a Pentium). First what i did was checking it for viruses. I used a recent version of my antivirus from a clean boot but it found nothing. The second was to test the hdd with the diagnostic utility taken from Samsung.

Pentium (w98)
When the spin test was performed, the hdd stopped and after two or three seconds started again successfully. Even the surface test was right but it doesn´t work. When the memory test finish, the next E/S error message apears:

PentiumII (w98)
When the spin test was performed, the hdd stopped and i´m still waiting for a response.

(the error message is in spanish because of the system version)

orrecto
Error E/S
Cambie el disco y presione una tecla

In english it would be something like this:

ight (the first letter doesn´t appear (right))
E/S error
Change the disk and press any key


i would very grateful if you can help me
thank you

 

[dinosnake]

The errors are a little vague but is sounds like the bootstrap cannot find the OS - io.sys, msdos.sys and others.

Can you boot from a floppy and access the hard drive?

If so the partition table or the system files may be corrupt - you can SYS or FDISK /MBR the drive - but don't. Not until you tell me much, much more about the system. If you are using a custom boot sector, or a boot manager for multiple systems - or some other possibilities - you'll do more damage than good.

Let's do this one step at a time. Your mileage may vary...

 

[nightowl17]

From what I get from your text is eather your system is not reconizing your hard drive ,What are the jumper settings at is it set for master?Another problem is the HDD is not formated for windows run fdisk and install the primary dos partion the install WIndows , If eather of these dont work I would say you problery have a badf HDD