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non booting PC

By pctech ·
I tried to remove norton antivirus because it was corrupted from a previous attempt to uninstall it from the hard drive by normal ways i.e. add/remove programs etc. and also because it somehow ended up with two different versions installed.
I used a program called RNAV.EXE from symantec?s web site to remove them through windows. The first version removed perfectly but when I tried to remove the second version the whole computer crashed and now will no longer boot up
When you attempt to boot from C drive it gives the message ?..searching for boot record from IDE-0?.. then?Boot failure insert boot disk ??.
When I attempt to boot from a Win98 boot disk it gives the following error :
Windows 98 detected that C: does not contain a valid Fat or Fat32 Partition There may be several possible causes
1 The drive may need to be repartitioned. To create a partition run Fdisk
2 You may be using third party utility software
3 Some viruses also cause C: not to register etc


When I run Fdisk I get the following message ?error reading fixed disk
I tried the Fdisk /mbr switch but it tells me that the MBR was NOT updated.
The hard drive is detected in BIOS but not when the PC tries to boot.
What can I do to fix this problem so I canaccess C: to repartition and reinstall or whatever
Thanks

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non booting PC

by Netuser In reply to non booting PC

You can reformat your drive and reinstall your o/s.

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non booting PC

by pctech In reply to non booting PC

If I could access the hard drive I would do exactly that

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non booting PC

by dmiles In reply to non booting PC

Before reformatting try repairing the MBR
Insert the win 98 startup disk at the command prompt type in FDISK /MBR,reboot
and choose to run setup without CD-ROM support,let the process insttall the system files and then eject the disk and reboot.
If this does not work,check the CMOS control panel to see if the drive is listed and set to AUTO
You still get the error message then reformat and install the operating system

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non booting PC

by pctech In reply to non booting PC

I cant access the hard disk at all not even with Fdisk but the hard disk is detected correctly in the CMOS control panel

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non booting PC

by zlitocook In reply to non booting PC

Try using A WIN95 boot disk and type sys c: and reboot. If that dont work use the same disk to see if you can get to the c drive. Do a dir to see if you can see the files. Also try a antivirus boot disk there mabie a virus in the boot sector. If youhave a cdrom remove the cable and put it on the hard drive. If you have to use ms delpart to remove partitions.

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non booting PC

by pctech In reply to non booting PC

I have tried all that you have suggested already but unable to do any of it

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non booting PC

by dmiles In reply to non booting PC

Use a ERD anti-virus disk if possible and boot the computer and run the anti-virus from dos mode,I too think that the virus has attacked the boot record and is still present on the machine
Rebooting has possibly caused the virus to other files and now it may not be possible to eradicate without fdisking the drive and starting over.
By continuing trying and rebooting gives the virus opurtunity to move to another place,plus you may have an infected boot disk and need to create a clean boot disk.

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non booting PC

by pctech In reply to non booting PC

The anti-virus boot disk couldnt access the drive either so I eventually solved the problem by replacing the hard drive

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non booting PC

by GregZ In reply to non booting PC

If you have an older machine that with most Bios's manufactuered prior to 1998 are not able to read hard drives larger than 8 Gig's, and if so, you will have to use the hard drive manufactuer's boot disk. If the HD was made by Maxtor, the disk was setup using a Dr. Dos utilty..

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non booting PC

by pctech In reply to non booting PC

The hard drive was totally unaccessible but I replaced it with an identical drive and solved the problem... thanx

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