At 08:11 AM 9/4/98 , you wrote:
>The systems is a 486-33mhz system running Win95. There are 2 hard
>drives on the system, 1st-325 mb drive, 2nd-4.1gb maxtor. The last
>time I used the system it worked fine. On the next startup I received
>the message detailed below. I can hear the hard drive start to spin,
>then silence. The diagnostics I found in the CMOS would only work if
>I allowed the system to delete my data, which I declined. I used a
>floppy boot disk to start the system. That's when I tried scandisk &
>chkdsk on the "C:" drive. They wouldn't work..no access. That's where
>I am..

Charles,

I would be willing to bet that your controller is fine, they are hard to kill.

My second thought is you have lost your Bios settings for the CMOS, as
mentioned earlier.   The bad battery is an excellent thought in this matter
and if the date is not right,  that is a prime determinator for a bad battery.

Then, there is the issue of a virus.  This is more rare...  but, one can do what
you have described.

Finally, you might want to double check to see that the cables are connected
tightly to the drives.  Depending on the conditions where the system
resides, they might have worked loose.

The first thing I would do is open the BIOS settings and make sure that the
drives are assigned properly.   If you lack the settings for these drives, post
the make and model here and we will be happy to run down the settings for
you.

Bob

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