dos problem

[DahWhon]

i have an older ibm aptiva computer, it recently broke and a boot file got deleted so i cant start up, also the disk drive broke before that, and i bought a new one, for some reason the computer will not pick up that I have installed the disk drive and i cannot get into dos to install the driver

i appreciate your help

 

[sethduncan]

Hey man. First off, check your disk drive cable. Those pesky things can get turned around easily and cause the drive to not get picked up. Also look for the light on the disk drive. If the light is constantly on, that's a sure fire sign that the cable is on backwards.

As far as the driver goes, what driver are you trying to install?

 

[DahWhon]

the light is not continuously on, i went to the site for the drive and downloaded a driver that i put on a floppy

 

[ekÆsine]

What's the model or capacity of your new hard disk and what was the capacity of the ones that you had installed in it before? It might be a bios limitation. You might try using an older hard disk or setting the jumper for a 32GB limit. You can also try using a PCI IDE controller

 

[xenosoul]

I think he is talking about a floppy drive. Anyways if the light is constantly on the cable is on backwards.

 

[ekÆsine]

oh....I guess you're right. I was thinking he meant hard disk drive. DahWhon your floppy drive light should be lit up when you boot up the computer. If it doesn't check your power. Go into your CMOS setup and enable the option for 3rd mode support for your floppy.

 

[killians45]

when you boot the floppy should light for a few seconds (accessing it for boot record) then turn off, unless a boot disk is in there. what WAS the message exactly that you had (error message???) Also, please explain a little more on what you mean?? Example:

it recently broke and a boot file got deleted so i cant start up, also the disk the disk drive broke before that, and i bought a new one for some reason the computer will not pick up that I have installed

are you saying this...
1. You're first HDD broke (was having disk read or i/o errors or something, not sure since you didn't specify) and that led you to believe a bad HDD

2. Now you have got this new one to replace the above HDD that was bad and you are getting no o/s detected errors, right? I hope you ARE using a boot disk and not trying to boot from the HDD, let us know exactly how you ARE booting... via cd or floppy??

3. If by floppy are you getting a non system disk error? If by cd, do you HAVE a floppy in the drive by accident (maybe a non system disk), in other words, make sure it has the needed system files.

4. OR are you able to BOOT off of the floppy, but the problem is you dont have the DOS CDROM DRIVERS, so you are sitting at Dos, with nothing to do because you can't start the installation process on the new replacement drive because it doesn't recognize the CD (this is what I think you mean, but again you haven't given details)

 

[DahWhon]

some of the boot files were corrupted, and it was the cd drive not the hard disk or floppy i dotn know what kind of disk to use to boot from the floppy i think i can boot from a disk if it was a boot, but i dont need to boot from the floppy, i just need to get into it so i can install the necissery files