At 08:53 AM 07/13/2000 Mark Cooper wrote:
>One of my old 486's has a problem. After a disk scan and
>defragmetation.  The computer seemed fine. Then after two days it was
>rebooted. Screen starts to load Win 95 and stops with a notice = no
>operating system found. Did the hard drive crash? Or is something wrong
>on motherboard? Anybody have any ideas?


Mark:

First verify your hard drive parameters are the "same" in CMOS (not
necessarily the "correct" parameters but the same CHS settings you
originally used to configure the geometry of the hard drive).

If the hard drive is over 5 years old, the sectors and their contents may
have aged (softened, decayed, lost coercivity) to the point that their
magnetic signals cannot be dependably read.

Back up your data as soon as practicable. The hard drive will only
experience more and different failures. Perform a file by file backup, then
try to make a ghost image or disk copy of the drive so you can recreate
your system on a replacement hard drive. Try to run the copy utilities from
a bootable floppy.

You may be able to renew the drive's system areas (their lack of
readability caused the boot failure) by booting to the Windows Startup
Disk, in the A: drive, and transferring the system files with the SYS C:
command. This will write over the old system files with new copies
presumably with a stronger signal. If this doesn't work, your sector
definitions are also growing unreliably soft.

Occasionally, you can rejuvenate a hard drive with a Low Level Format (lays
down new sectors) and then run a heavy duty surface scan from the drive
maker or high end disk utility. But with the low price of hard drives, it
is pound-foolish to try to save that penny when your data is at risk.  HTH.
Good luck.

Regards,

John Chin

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