hi there, I got a problem with my friend's pc which i found it very weird. See, my friend told me that he accidently delete some system files and the problem start to come. he try to reinstall win98 without formating the harddisk. Now cannot detect floppy drive and Cd-rom drive in DOS mode. Today i went over his house and see. Oh my god, this is the worst problem i ever saw. A:\ cannot detect, D:\ which is cd-rom can detect only when inside OS(Desktop). but both drive fail inside DOS mode. C:\ seem to be fine anywhere. I try alot of thing like regscan\restore. finally i decide to unplug all the hardware in Motherboard. and plug in all the necessary card like display, HDD, CD-rom and Floppy drive. Then the floppy drive turn to be ok. So i put the bootdisk before bootup but hang half way. try to boot up with cd also hang at the same place. the only drive can boot up is hard drive. so I also try to use at desktop and "Restat in Ms-dos". in that part, i can access A:\ but not D:\. Second big problem is that at desktop and i am trying to setup the cable modem so that i can access for more help. the setup is perfect and manage to get IP but the just can't access any web or i shall say can't ping to anywhere. I am pretty sure that the setup is done correctly as i am using the same modem at home and install in it for a few times with no problem. The only thing I suspected is the Mainboard faulty but I can't get anyway to convince my friend as he say that he never disturb the mainboard since the day he board and everything went fine until he delete system files which can't spoilt the mainboard. the main board model i am not sure but i think the brand is skywalker. any advice out there?

what do you see in the bios?

The cdrom is probably not seen when you exit to dos because it hasn't been configured for dos. That's not a big deal to correct. Post back contents of c:\config.sys and c:\windows\dosstart.bat (if you have that file) and I'll tell you how to do it. Looks like you've isolated the floppy problem to a hardware conflict. If the machine you're talking about is the P4 try installing the chipset drivers. Since it started with deleted files, you may want to reinstall windows over itself. If so rename win.com to something else like win.old and install windows in the normal manner. When the installation process asks what directory you want windows installed in, it will default to 'windows.000' since it already detects a directory named 'windows'. Choose 'other dirctory' and change it back to 'windows' so it installs in your old directory.

I see everything very normal at bios. nothing special to declare. to DAVEINCAP, I believe that I can't follow the way you wanted me to do as I formated the C:/ which mean that everything is empty now. After Formating. I put bootdisk inside the PC and restart. The same problem occur. I even went into the BIOS and select the default from the setting and try it agian but nothing seem to improve. Anymore advice from anyone? for your info, When bootup, the system got show that master drive for primary is HDD and secondary is CD-rom. I also got try to put the cd-rom to primary slave and try but the same problem still exsit. now i cannot go into window anymore as i formatted the drive. PLS HELP!!!

I'd gotten the impression that some files had been deleted but that windows was still there albeit all screwed up. What exactly happens when you boot from a 98 bootdisk and choose cdrom support? What error messages come up on the screen?

Ya exactly, some files had been deleted but i due to the final decision. I formatted the drive. When I put in the bootdisk, normally you will see your ram is testing, followed by your IDE device and will proceed to next page which is your system info and the last command is "verify pool bla bla bla"(can't remember the exact word). My friend's PC stuck there for more than an hour with bootdisk inside the floppy. even with i choose to boot up from cd-rom with bootdisk cd inside the drive, it will show boot from ATAPI-cd rom. and it stuck there too. Before i formatted the HDD, same problem occur unless i choose to boot from HDD first and it will go to desktop. you can email me if you want more info. thanks so much for your time

A computer hanging there can be a problem with the bios sorting out the drives or possibilty some cmos settings. You might want to go into cmos and load the setup defaults if you have that option. Then check the cabling and jumpers on the IDE devices. I can't think of anything specific but I recall some info on a PC freezing while 'verifying DMI pool' You might want to do a google search for: "verifying DMI pool" freezing (enter it exactly like that with a space between " and freezing) and see if you get any additional info.