Hello Ellen,
Sunday, December 23, 2001, 7:46:08 PM, you wrote:
E> But it's
E> interesting that despite all my fdisking, debugging
E> and formatting, the Dell logo still pulls up on
E> start-up...
Actually, the reason you see a Dell logo at bootup is because this has
been added to the BIOS. (i.e. Dell commissioned the BIOS writer to add
their logo to the code.) This is not sinister. Nearly every OEM does
it. The BIOS routines are on a chip. So, the logo would survive
everything except, perhaps, a hammer.
E> However, one
E> posting mentions Ontrack Disk Manager creating a HDD
E> overlay. That had occurred to me too, so I ran a debug
E> I found at the Microsoft site, which was specifically
E> for destoying HDD overlays (which they said OEM
E> manufacturers often used).
E> But that didn't get rid of it either.
Before you try to destroy the overlay that may or may not be there,
why not try to determine if you have one running? Most of these
questions cab be located here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q186057
1. How old is your system?
2. Is LBA expressly enabled or disabled in CMOS?
3. If there is no LBA-related CMOS settings, an application like
WCPUID will help you identify the motherboard and manufacturer. Look
up the docs on the MB manfactuers web site to see if the MB supports
LBA.
4. After executing fdisk /status, does the sum of the existing
partitions equal to more than the total _physical_ hard drive space?
5. After executing MEM /C -- after having booted to a MS-DOS prompt --
does the conventional memory equal less than 655,360?
6. At C:\, can you find *.bin, *.ovl files other than drvspace.bin
and dblspace.bin?
The link also helps you use a Windows 95/98 start up floppy to determine
if you can access windows\system.
I think that before you run out and buy another drive, I think we
should try to understand what's happening. I'm not convinced I've all
the facts of what's happening here.
I'd like to know the following information:
1. How old is the system? When did you buy it?
2. Who manufacturered the hard drive(s)?
3. What is is the primary control method? IDE? SCSI?
4. How large is the primary hard drive?
I'd also like for you to answer the questions above relating to
overlays.
Cheers,
Mike Whalen
Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
http://freepctech.com
|
