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New Motherboard problem

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11 replies

by ameliapumo

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Further to my previous questions, I gave up

(I run a charity that had a PC donated to it, which would not boot up, except in safe mode (which is why the owner got rid of it))

After trying all usual solutions I gave up and replaced the motherboard which did not solve the problem

So I put a hard drive from one of my boyfriends PC's in, incase the problem was with the original hard drive (even though all diagnostic tests shoed no problem with hard drive)

To cut a long story short, even if I use a boot disk from Win 98, I get a message saying that windows has ncountered a problem and cannot find a fixed drive

This is despite when on boot up it says "detecting IDE Drives" and the CD and HD are listed correctly

If I don't use a start up floppy, it says "invalid boot disk"

11 replies

by thechas

Well, just because the BIOS detects a hard drive does not mean that you can boot from the drive.

First off, the drive needs to be partitioned and formatted.
The primary DOS partition needs to be set as active for the boot drive.

Then, the drive needs to be set up as a boot drive.
From DOS, you can either use the sys command, or use the "s" switch when you format the drive.
format c: /s

Keep in mind that the jumpers need to be set properly for how the drives are connected.
Many drives have a different jumper setting for single as opposed to master with slave present.
Also, if you have a cable select style IDE cable, you have to make sure the drives are plugged into the correct ports to be master and slave.

Chas

by thechas

I received your message.

I have learned over the years here that I cannot make any assumptions as to a peers level of knowledge.
I try not to make my answers to simple, or too complex.

Sometimes all it takes is a slight memory jog to get to the correct solution.

I couple of further thoughts on the problem:

The BIOS is set so that HDD 0 is a boot device?

Have you tried re-setting the CMOS memory?

New IDE cable?

Power supply?
Are both the 5 and 12 volt lines present and stable?
Check for broken or bad wires in the ground lines.

If I come up with any more ideas, I will add them.

Chas

by duskos

If the PC is somewhat older and the disk is newer, there may be problems with disk size. Some older BIOS's cannot properly recognize disks larger than 20GB. There were also some problems with disks larger rhan 130GB.

To solve that kind of problem, one would usualy update BIOS or buy a new motherboard.

by ameliapumo

Checked all possible problems as suggested.

things are now going from bad to worse

I now have 2 pc's that don't work and 2 hard drives I cannot access in ANY Pc (including the 5 others we use)

I've tried everything

Memory, motherboard, leads, cables, etc

Could it be that somehow a virus has got into the originalmotherboard such that every time I boot up it somehow destroys the boot sector on the hard drives

I don't know whether this is possible, but I can't see how 2 hard drives which initially would boot up in safe mode only on PC #1, but worked on the other PC #2 will now not work on either, both PC's report that there are no fixed drives present. I cannot even go into safe mode, and using a floppy boot disk eventually reports too, that there are no fixed drives present

PLEASE HELP

by ameliapumo

I have posted an updated question on the PC Troubleshooting section as this seems more appropriate.

by oasisdiver

I have built a few and had simular problems and I found 9/10 times it was the Ram moduals.
I had an PIII 866 on a Asus board had a lot of
errors trying to install Win98, I replaced
harddrive after harddrive and then I switched the
Ram. Now the thing runs perfect...

Hope that helps

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