Your symptoms are consisten with either an IDE controller problem or a problem with the ESCD configuration. Clearing the CMOS is a good start, and enter the BIOS setup and say yes to the question about Clearing the ESCD configuration.
You can check the disck controller by using IBM/Hitachi's DFT program (by booting it off a floppy). Try connecting only the hard drive to the primary master, and disconnect the CD-ROM drives. Set the bios to Autodetect. If you still can't boot you may need to rewrite the boot sector or MBR. Boot up a Windows 98 boot diskette, type: fdisk /mbr [ENTER] ...then type: sys a: c: [ENTER] And then reboot. Still can't boot? Boot up the Windows 98 diskette and type fdisk Now select option 2. (set active partition). And reboot... --- In [email protected], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > OK, my computer has stumped the local computer guy so am wondering if anyone here has a clue. The computer is a Gateway AMD Athlon K-7, was running windows 98 as the os. It had 512 mb memory. Out of the blue, when turned on, the computer would not boot. It boots thru the bios, then has a black screen that says disk not ready. So, of course we thought it was the hard drive. The floppy drive works, as we can boot with a rescue disk. The weird thing is it wont read the c drive. The hard drive rescue disc wont read the c-drive. We take the c-drive out and it is easily read by another computer. Next we thought of a boot sector virus. Scanned, scanned and scanned, no virus, no adware. So, we put another known working hard drive in the computer, wont boot, wont read the drive, yet the computer will boot past the bios,and the mother board appears to be functioning as we can access the bios just fine and it all looks to be working. The cmos battery was taken out and put back in. Any ideas on this motherboard before we scrap the thing? I am at work, cant get the specs on the motherboard right at the moment, but will be able to post that later. > Ginny If you have any questions or problems with any aspect of this site, please feel free to contact me directly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please do not post personal issues directly to the group. To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you for using A-1 Computer Tech Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/A-1-Computer_Tech/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
