At 04:52 PM 7/11/1998 Alvin B Johnson wrote:
>
>486-DX-66 with Maxtor Hardrive
>When I turn computer on it goes through the post and hangs. Sometimes it
>say can"t acess Hard drive and at other times its say its a controller
>problem. When I boot and it hangs because of the "Can't acesss hard
>drive" I can use a boot disk and go to the A-prompt. when I try to acess
>C it say "Bad Command"
>
>I have reseated the cables and the I/o controller card. I also went into
>setup and automatically found the hard drive and acepted its findings
>into CMOS.


Alvin:

You didn't provide enough information to provide detailed
assistance. Next time, please state the type, model and age
of your hard drive, make and model of the motherboard,
type and location of the hard drive interface, and operating
system. If you are working on, say, a Micronics 486 Overdrive
VESA-LB motherboard with a new Diamond Max 84004A8 running
MaxBlast under Win95, you could get some very definite answers
from the good folks here.

If you need to identify your drive without opening your computer,
I recommend you go to the MICROHOUSE site at:

     http://www.solutions.microhouse.com/support/files/misc.htm

and download IDEID.ZIP which is a freeware utility for querying
IDE hard-drive 'firmware', will give information such as Make,
Model, drive dimensions (Cylinders, Heads, Sectors) and serial
(v 3.0) (ZIPfile format; needs PKunzip utility 2.04g or later).

Use IDEID to verify you have the correct hard drive parameters
in CMOS, according to what the DRIVE RECOMMENDS, unless
LBA support is enabled in your BIOS to support this drive. The
Autodect hard drive in your CMOS should have selected the
same parameters.

The very first thing is to check all your connections, particularly
checking for BENT IDE PINS (make sure they all go into their
corresponding sockets in the connector), and proper alignment
(the color edge of data cable goes to PIN #1). Check sockets on
the ribbon cables, then look for nicks in the insulation. Then, run
a powerful, updated antivirus program from its emergency boot
floppy. If there's no virus, then . . . .

If the CMOS drive parameters are correct and never change,
but the system SOMETIMES cannot "see" the drive, then, you
probably have a hardware problem.

You might have unstable power (from the power supply), so
you should first try switching the power cable with a known
working power cable from the power supply.

IDE hard drives have the controller circuitry built onto the drive so
try replacing the drive with a known working hard drive. If that
works, you've narrowed the investigation to the drive. If it doesn't
solve the problem, try the Maxtor in a known working computer (be
careful about viruses -- i.e., disconnect other drives). If the drive
works, then the problem is in the IDE interface card or the
motherboard. Try replacing the IDE interface card with a known
working IDE interface card. If that doesn't work, you probably
have a motherboard problem.

If your system can ALWAYS "see" your drive at the hardware
level, then the problem is likely with the partitioning and/or
formatting of the drive. If you can boot to the A: drive, using a
bootable floppy (with FDISK and FORMAT) run FDISK to see
if the OS can see your drive. If you get the MAIN MENU, go to
"4. Display partition information", and verify you have a
PRIMARY DOS PARTITION set ACTIVE, and a SYSTEM
(either FAT16 or FAT32, if you are using DOS or Windows 95).
If you have a primary DOS partition but it is not active, set it
ACTIVE (Main Menu choice 2). If you don't have a primary DOS
partition or a system, you should re-partition and re-format your
drive.

If you feel capable enough, go to the MAXTOR website at:

    http://www.maxtor.com/library/allfiles.html

and download LLFUTIL.EXE which is the Maxtor Universal
IDE Low Level Format program. If you have an old drive, or
have a virus, you should consider this extreme route (there
are no warranties with this choice). ONLY use the MAXTOR
low-level format software on your Maxtor (it has the correct
LLF commands and drive information). Confirm that the
drive is properly identified. Make sure the drive is positioned
as it will be when in operation and have the drive running at
least 30 minutes before proceeding.

Remember, Low Level formatting and FDISK-ing will delete
all data on the drive, so you are burning bridges (hope you
have a backup).

These are general tips. Usually trouble shooting without test
equipment/software involves swapping in KNOWN-WORKING
components for those parts under scrutiny for improper
operations.

Good luck,

John Chin