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my harddrive crashed a couple of days ago. Today I tried reinstalling MS dos 5.0 and then after that windows 3.1. During the MS dos 5.0 installation a message came up and said C:\drive is not formatted. It did not let me reformat, so I exited setup and put in the windows 3.1 diskatte. During that installation the same message popped up, and again it did not give me an option to reformat. So I was wondering if there was any way I can reformat the harddrive without it being too complicated.
dboy
Sorry the error message that I was getting was that "C drive does not exist". The computer was only detecting the A drive. There was no format option.
dboy
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If it holds the time and date properly as well as knowing the correct FDD, then I'd say either the HDD or it's controller have went to hardware heaven...
Otherwise a new CMOS battery (and a correct input of the HDD geometry into the CMOS setup) should get you going again...
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My dad found out that the HDD was not the prob. it was the CMOS. Can anyone tell me what the CMOS is and what it does.
dboy
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Google can
We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true
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The bios stores information about the pc, such as memory size, hdd parameters, type and size of floppys, date and time calender.
The bios has a battery that keeps it running while the pc is off. e.g this keeps the calender correct for when you switch on.
A good indication of when the battery is starting to fail is the calender is incorrect when you switch on. Eventually the hdd parameters will be lost and the pc will no longer 'see' the hdd - this may be your case.
Do *NOT* reformat your hdd as all your info may still be there.
Input hdd parameters to the bios when you switch on (even with the failed battery in place), and the pc will 'see' the hdd. Then check its state.
Good Luck - Keep us posted.
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There are several things that can be wrong here, and other pitfalls.
I don't know if anyone has been pawing around in the case, or if the computer was sorta, dropped, but:
It could always be a defective/ improperly connected IDE cable
hard drive jumpers
bad hard drive
Bios /(cmos) battery dead, lost the hard drive settings.
If there was drive overlay (Ezbios) installed, the hard drive needs a special boot sector, and you cannot partition (fdisk) and format the drive when booted COLD from a floppy
If you check all this and the drive is still "not there" then it just might be bad.
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I thin Mike Newcomb is right. My dad asked a close friend who knows all about computers and builds them. He said that we have to find these numbers on our HDD and then enter in those numbers somewhere. My dad knows what to do, but thanks everyone for the help. With all the help from you guys and that dude my dad was taking to he knows what to do.
dboy
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