I have an older machine that has been having some problems for quite some time. The most significant problems have been: - Some time back (maybe a year and a half ago), the harddrive died and I replaced it with a new 40GB drive. - Upon starting Windows, I get a message saying Systray performed an illegal operation. Sometimes I get this message twice in a row while everything's starting up, sometimes just one and occasionally not at all. Regardless of however many times it happens, I seem to generally be able to click OK or whatever and keep going. This has been a recurring issue for quite a while now. - System crashes are not uncommon with this machine. Can be as frequent as once daily, but probably averages once every couple of days. The issues above may not be related to each other or to my primary question now, but I just wanted to give as much background info on my old system as possible. So last night I noticed the system had frozen again. I first tried the CTRL+ALT+DEL thing to identify and kill any processes that might be causing the freeze-up, and ultimately turned the power off and back on (the system didn't respond to CTRL+ALT+DEL). Instead of the usual blue screen while Scandisk checks my harddrive, I got a couple of beeps and a black screen with a "Missing Operating System" message. I tried rebooting several times (CTRL+ALT+DEL worked fine now) with the same result. I didn't think it could be that the harddrive was dead because it's the newest part of that system. So I opened up the case and I pulled the IDE cable off the drive and motherboard and put it back in case it had somehow gotten loosened. Same result. I swapped the IDE cable with another in case the cable had somehow gone bad. Same result. I disconnected the power supply to the harddrive and rebooted to see if the "MOS" message I was getting was the same as I'd get if the drive wasn't present, and this time I got an "Operating System Not Found" message. I dunno what that tells me exactly, but anyway... I downloaded a Win98 bootable floppy image and created it with my XP machine and successfully booted my machine to the A: drive with the diskette. I changed to C: and tried to do a directory listing and got a message "Invalid Media Type reading drive C" with the standard abort, retry or fail options. I tried booting up with my Norton Antivirus CD, which resulted in the same message (Invalid Media Type reading drive C) when it tried to scan my harddrive. Fdisk shows my harddrive with its one partition and correctly shows the size of the drive. My BIOS correctly identifies the drive. So I'm at a loss. Part of me thinks the harddrive is somehow just fried and I should go buy a new one and restore my system. Another part of me think my system may be infected. I run Norton Antivirus once a week on that system, but I did skip it last week (still, it's been less than 2 weeks since I ran it last). I think my virus definitions are fairly up-to-date. I came across some info online about using the "fdisk /mbr" command in the case of some MBR issues, but I've also seen some info about not using it (here on this forum among other places). The main thing in all this is that there are a couple of files on the drive I'd really like to get off of there. I don't mind buying a new harddrive, but I sure would like to get my old one going just long enough to copy those few files to a couple of floppys. So, anybody got any suggestions on how to proceed from here? Thanks in advance!

If the drive is identified properly in the BIOS and FDISK, it's possble that you got a boot-sector virus or trashed your Master Boot Record. If you aren't using dual-boot or drive-ovelay software, then you might try the following: Can you see ANY files on the C:\drive (type DIR C:/S)? If so, then From a boot disk, go to the C: drive and type FDISK /MBR and press <Enter>. If the drive appears empty or you get a "general failure reading" error, then the drive is probably seriously damaged (Cylinder 0/Track 0). FDISK /MBR may or may not help, but it will either do no harm or you will get an error. If you get an error, you might try slaving this drive from another computer and trying to get stuff from it. Don

Some updates... I figured that I didn't have much to lose, so I went ahead and tried: - Booting from floppy and doing "sys c:" - nothing seemed to happen. No "System Transferred" or any error message. I just got another A: prompt and then I went to C: and tried a directory listing and got the same "Invalid Media Type reading drive C" message. - Booting from floppy and doing "fdisk /mbr" - I got the "Invalid Media Type reading drive C" message. So basically neither seems to have done anything for my situation. I did this before I saw your response, Don (which I greatly appreciate)... To answer one of your questions - no, I can't see anything on the C: drive. Looks like I'm going with the slave option just to try to get my data files at this point. Isn't it unusual for a harddrive to go bad so fast? Given the fact that this has now happened more than once with this machine, is there some deeper problem for which harddrives going bad is just a symptom? Am I treating the symptom by replacing the harddrive, and might I be doing so again in another year and a half or so?

ok, so here's another update... I removed the harddrive from the old machine and installed it as a slave in my XP machine. XP detected the new harddware correctly, but when I tried to access my new drive via Windows Explorer, it says "The disk in Drive F is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" Sounds like my data's lost, eh?

Hi see if you have a prgram DISKEDIT.exe part of norton works. It "may" work.. if phisical drive is selected. I know i can not spell. If you have program , will try to help.

Yeah, the 'invalid media type reading drive c:' indicates it's not formatted. Assuming you reformat and reinstall windows, it'd be a good idea to install these patches: ESDI_506 and IDE CACHE once windows is reinstalled. Be sure to install the 98 chipset drivers for the motherboard also. They should either be on the disk that came with the motherboard or will be on the manufacturer's website.

Don Miller Good to see your qualifications regarding the use of fdisk/mbr. Too often it is trotted out without this proviso (sometimes as an 'aspirin') and can be a potential wrecker. Nice one. D