I can't find my hard drive. I have rebooted with a boot disk and run fdisk/mbr. It gets me to the c: prompt. I can then start w98, but after a few minutes of doing scandisk or other diagnostic utilities (file checker etc.,) it starts slowing down and I get the critical error blue box. When I reboot I get a "Boot Failure" command and can not get to the c: drive until I re-insert the boot disk-run fdisk/mbr start w98 and the whole thing repeats. I have scanned the syatem for virus's using F-prot. I have checked the enternal cableing. Tried various boot sector repair programs, but it still fails. I have done everything but replace the drive which is next.

hi! just to make sure ur m/b is alright i suggest u take ur HDD to another machine and then try it out. if it still fails, time to get a new disk!!!

Hi Mike, This problem may or may not be the fault of your hard disk, as Kailas stated above, it may be a fault on your motherboard. How old is the hard disk and has it any bad clusters? If your hard disk is awash with damaged clusters, before filing it in the bin, try a low level format. It may be possible to restore the disk to full working order. Regards Vito

Boot from a floppy and type scandisk c: /surface This will surface check the complete drive. It takes quite a while! You also might want to download a diagnostic from the hard drive manufacturer's web site.

Is the partition set active?

Look at the jumpers at the back of the drive and make sure that if the drive is to be a master, then its jumpered accordingly, save if it is to be a slave (assuming your using a IDE drive)