I am troubleshooting a problem with an associate's Gateway P5-133 computer with a WD 1.3GB hard drive running Windows 95 on 32 MB RAM.

The PC's owner came to me when he was unable to start Windows.  The PC would POST and boot into DOS and indicate that Windows had fatal registry errors and could not load.  Upon examination, I found that several key files were missing from the hard drive such as USER.DAT and SYSTEM.INI.  As a quick fix for the problem, I decided to reinstall Windows (95) and the process proceeded as expected until the point where Windows detects PnP devices.  The PC hung unrecoverably and I was forced to reboot.  Upon reboot, the PC, after POST, informed me that "no bootable media was found".  Rebooting and entering CMOS setup showed that no hard drive could be found. Even if I selected "USER" and specified drive parameters.

After some head scratching, I suspected that a virus (Chernobyl-type) had wiped the hard drive and possibly the bios.  I reflashed the bios to no avail, no hard disk found.  Everything else in the BIO/CMOS seemed in order.  I then proceeded to remove the hard disk and install it in another PC.  Disk was auto-detected just fine and appeared to be intact and clean.

I now suspect a faulty hard disk controller, since everything else seems OK.  Is this a logical conclusion?  I assume that the disk controller is on-board, so a new motherboard is in order, correct?

Responses direct and to the list would be appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

Steve Polatas

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