Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > PC formatting help please boffins??

[Guido]

Been given a PC by a mate that I can use for dumping my photos on and as a drone workstation if I get to the stage of displaying/selling my pics trackside at race meetings/trackdays.

It had Win98 on it and a whole heap of junk. As I wanted a completely clean starting point, I carried out a format of the hard drive via DOS.

I wanted to reinstall using Win2k (the PC is not powerful enough to install XP) so insterted in CD in the drive after formatting and started up the machine - I had reset the BIOS to command the PC to boot from CD first then floppy.

Here's my problem.........

Now when I start the PC, the CD-ROM light illuminates and stays on. However, I can't hear the CD drive spinning as you normally would.

As the PC tries to boot it comes up with the message: "Invalid System disk, bla, bla, bla"

I know the CD is bootable as I used it 2 weeks ago to reinstall the O/S on my boss's work computer from DOS. I just formated the drive and Windows setup started as soon as I started up the PC with the CD in.

I can only assume there's a problem with the CD-drive on the PC in that it's not reading the disks.

I then created the 4-set bootdisk set via DOS and the Win2K installation CD. Starting setup from the 4 floppy disks (typically ) fails on the 4th disk with the error "Filename fastfat.sys is corrupted".

This happens with internet-forum created bootdisks and the Win2K CD-rom created bookdisks.

Help please ............

What can I do to get an O/S back onto the machine???? Do I really have to buy a new CD rom drive for an antique machine which may not be recognised anyway as there's no O/S in place?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[crm250]

Sounds like the drive is ancient, you could try inserting the HDD from the old machine into your normal PC, and run the first part of setup on your main machine (ie partition and copy the files then put the HDD back into the old machine for its first boot and allow the HAL to set itself up properly)
Or put your good CD drive into the old pc and try that.

[rockhopper]

If you reformatted the pc then turned it off and re booted it will have lost its cd rom drivers so it cannot read the windows cd. You need to make a boot floppy with the cd drivers on and boot from it.
The secret is don't restart the pc after you do a format!
Older computers cannot be booted from the cd drive either.

[Guido]

Thank you the two Paul's

Both ideas are FAB and prove my brain is fuggled after a 13 hour wedding snapping marathon yesterday...

Will go and play...!!!

Thanks again, Gc

[chrisw]

Download the boot disk files for Windows ME. Just do a Google search. This has both the CD drivers and the dos tools for FDISK and Format.

If you are struggling I'll burn one to CD and post 2 u.

[Guido]

Back to the drawing board chaps.

I've tried creating a floppy bootdisk and then copying those files (i.e. Autoexec & command.com etc) to my defunct hard-drive. I also copiedt he WIn2K setup CD to that drive hoping I'd get a C:> prompt and then be able to run setup.exe.

Of course that would be simple and of course life aint like that!!!!!

The drive would not boot up and I just got another annoying error message.

Then tried getting the CD-ROM drivers for the CD drive in the hope I could get my Win2K setup CD to boot from DOS. The only drivers available on the net will not run from DOS but have to be run from within Windows so that's a non-starter too.

Tried the partial install of Win2K by putting the drive in my good machine as a 'slave' and all I've managed to do is now get a prompt on my good drive when I fire up my machine asking which OS I want to run (XP or Win2K) Not sure what you meant when you said 'run the first part of the install' Paul as it was either install or don't. I did install Win2K on the 'D' slave drive but it's obviously written files to my C: on this good machine as I can't boot the drive up in the defunct machine and get the twin O/S question on this XP Pro machine.

Runing out of options and patience now.....as my avatar is kicking in....!!!

Is here anything I can do to get this frickin PC up and running.

I know it's easy to buy a cheap PC off Ebay nowadays but buying anything aint an option for me unfortunately.

Thanks once again for any help offered.

Guy

[Mr_S]

Thoughts....

CD Drives not being detected.

Sounds like the CDROM drives broke, become disconnected or it's not being read as the boot disk.

Open the case and check the IDE cable (it's the flat one about 2 inches across) is fitted tightly into the drive unit and onto the board.

In the BIOS, set the drives to autodetect, and see if it shows up. If not, it's dead.

Check the BIOS again to ensure it's set to boot from, and put it at the beginning of the list.

Important stuff to save time looking.

Drivers for the CD-Rom are irrelevant for basic operation at this level so don't worry about them.


Or,

Get it couriered to me, and I'll sort it out for you. If it can be fixed without major surgery.

[Guido]

Many thanks Chaps.

With the exceptional help of CRM250 (aka Paul), I've got the thing sorted.

Basically, put the drive in my good pac as the master (i.e. disconnected my two existing drives from the power and IDE cables). Began the Win2k setup uotp where it asks you to reboot. Powered down the machine and took the drive and my good DVD RW drive upstairs and put it in the PC and continued setup. Viola........

Can now dump all my 2005 images on that machine out of the way.

Cheers Paul.

Owe you a beer mate (or a good deal on a spankin VJ23
)

Guy

[Jasper]

I have a few spare drives if you want one.

[Guido]

Cheers Rich. Have my eye on a 300gb beastie on Ebuyer....

Should keep me going for 2006