Troubleshooting PCs and the Beeping Noises...

[Mr. tech]

Awesome thanks.

yes I can get into BIOS. Once I'm in there what should I do to reformat?

Do I just need to make it boot from the floppy disk first and run FDISK?

Cheers

 

[Nubius]

Well what OS are you using?

You want the CD to be first in the boot sequence and boot from that. From there will be easy follow instructions to delete your old partition, create a new one and format using an NTFS file format, you'd only need a Fat32 format if you were using Win98 or something.

With the newer OS's, Win2000, WinXP, you don't need boot disks, and even the Win98 I had never required a boot disk if you have the CD.

 

[Mr. tech]

Win 98 is on it. I've got the boot disk and CD. I think I know where to go from there.

I'm going to use Symantec Ghost to copy information from another harddrive to it. If I do that, do I need to reformat it or will it do it for me when I ghost it?

Also, is it cool if I ghost the information from a smaller harddrive (10 Gig) to a larger one (40 Gig)?

Cheers

 

[switch]

Ghost will make a duplicate image to a larger disc, no problem. It will erase all the data on that disc that it is writing to, in sense formatting it. If you can hook up the 40 Gb drive as a slave drive, you can make sure that you can read anything that is on it prior to making it your new primary drive. (if there is any data on it to be read)

This way you know if the drive is physically ok, and should take a ghost image, or a fresh OS reload.

You can also get a utility disc boot cd for that drive, or a boot disc like UBCD. With this, you can run the manufacturer specific drive analisys utility, format the drive, retrieve intact data, etc...

 

[Mr. tech]

Thanks Mate. Will do what you said and see how I go.

Cheers

 

[Mr. tech]

OK, I jsut installed Windows 98 onto a Blank harddrive. It was working fine and it even opened up windows.

I then shut down the computer, attached the 40 Gig harddrive to it as the slave but got this error:

BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I then unattached the 40 gig harddrive and I still go the error.

My boot order is: C,A,SCSI

Where can i find the System Disk? Is that the install CD?

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help

 

[Nubius]

IDE-0 needs to be first in the boot order.

 

[Mr. tech]

There is no IDE 0 in the boot sequence...

When I boot it says my BIOS is v4.6PGMA.

It then shows some other information and then displays:

IDE Primary Master ... none
IDE Primary Slave .. none

Then shows a couple of other lines and goes into another screen and shows a heap of information and at the bottom it gives me the error.

What am I doing wrong?

Ben

 

[Nubius]

It's not seeing the HD. Go into the BIOS, go to "Standard CMOS Setup" I believe. If you can use the arrow keys to go down to where it says

IDE Primary Master - Not Installed

Go down highlight it and press ENTER to see if then the HD pops up.

In the boot sequence it should be IDE-0, HDD-0, something along those lines but if the boot sequence is fine, then try doing what I said in the BIOS to see if the HD comes up.

 

[Mr. tech]

Will do. how every the on drives in the Boot Sequence is:

C,A,CDROM,SCSI

Maybe it will popup when I enable the harddrive?

Thanks