At 06:04 AM 10/31/98 , Fred Hahnel wrote:
>Yesterday, I attempted to install a Promise Ultra 33 card in my Aptiva
>M40-2168.  I had to make an extension of the cable which connects the HD's
>to the motherboard in order to reach the card where the HD's will be plugged
>in.  I booted the computer;the card was recognized and the HD's were
>recognized.  However, I received the same message you get when you reboot a
>computer and leave a non bootable floppy in the computer.
>Now I couldn't boot up.   So, I figured the card was causing the problem, so
>I removed it, reconnected the cable without the extension to the motherboard
>and rebooted.  Now it attempts to boot and runs scandisk.  Scandisk finds  a
>bat FAT and tells me to replaced it with "copy 2" which I did.  Then it goes
>through the "directory" structures and finds several damaged directories
>which it fixes.  Then it finds crosslinked files (184 of them) which it
>saves as file*.chk.
>I again attempt to reboot and gets all the way to WIN98 desktop.  Then it
>says file C:\win\system32.dll damaged .  Please reinstall file.  I made a
>copy of this from another computer and same result.   Also, explorer does
>not load.  I get the icons but no taskbar.  Hit C\A\D and no explorer.   Go
>into safe mode with same result.
>Now, I figure I'll boot from a WIN98 emergency disk and just reinstall
>WIN98.  Do this and get an error "SUwin.dlll" which tells we to '"ignore" or
>"retry" or "ok".  I hit OK. Blank screen.  Reboot and now it says "unable to
>load kernel, reinstall Windows" and the computer shuts off.
>I then attempt to boot of the emergency diskette.   I use "ghost" to backup
>my computer and attempt to run it.  It shuts down and says "error - see
>ghost.err" and ghost shuts down.
>I tried to sys the c: and the computer says "no system on default drive".  I
>can however go to the C: prompt and see all my files and directories.
>
>Now for the questions:
>
>Why can't I just sys the drive?   I think I may have reversed the connector
>at the HD when I initially connected the Ultra 33 card because of the
>"extension".  Is it possible I somehow damaged the drive if I did this?
>What could I do at this point?  Sorry, this is so long!!

I believe the issue you have started with your extention cable, ( I cringed
when you mentioned the extention ).  You should have invested in a
new longer cable as it should have been very inexpensive.

I believe the extention was not transfering data cleanly.   During the bootup
process it pulled data from your hard drive and then wrote it back in a fashion
that corrupted your data, probably the partion and more.

At this point, you will probably need to insure you have a clean data feed
from the hard drive to the motherboard, (either with the Udma33 card and
one long cable or just connect the system as it was before), use Fdisk to
repartition the hard drive and reload the data.

You have not mentioned anything that should have actually harmed the
hard drive, only the data.



Bob Wright  -   The NOSPIN GROUP
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