You first need to see if you can access your A: drive from a DOS boot;
otherwise, you are going to have some difficulties in the event you need to
reinstall Windows.

If you cannot use the A: drive even from a DOS boot, I might suspect that
either something has change in your BIOS settings to have excluded this
drive or that something mechanically has gone wrong with the drive and that
it might need to be replaced.

If there is any way you can use FDISK from a DOS boot, you can then look at
your partitions.  Partition Magic would be VERY helpful to you right about
now, see if you can purchase a copy soon.  It will help you now and quite
possibly in the future.

--gary r. tennesen
[log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Albin O. Schreiter" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [PCBUILD] Corrupted WIN98SE


> My PC is a 550 mh 256 k memory desktop with Win98 SE and has worked
perfectly til now. I have a 20 g hard drive divided into partitions C, D, E,
F and G and a CD RW drive at partition I. A couple of days ago partitions F,
G, and I have disappeared without a trace and can no longer be accessed.
Also the A drive 3.5 floppy cannot be accessed. Everything on the C D and E
drives works fine. I now have the problem that I cannot load through the CD
RW drive or the A floppy, so the Windows CD and the Rescue Disk upon A do
not work. What happens if I reformat the hard drive (I have backup CD's)?
Will I then be able to access the a drive to use the recue disk? Is there I
way to get the CD RW drive to work?Any suggestions will be appreciated. I
think that somehow a Win driver or drivers have become corrupted, and now I
am afraid that the C D and E drives may also disappear, leaving me wiped
out.
>

              The NOSPIN Group is now offering Free PC Tech
                     support at our newest website:
                          http://freepctech.com