This message is -NOT- caused by a virus!
It is caused by the drive's own seek mechanism being unable to
recalibrate and locate the first track and sector at a "low" level.
This is not the same as corrupted a boot sector which a virus can cause.
You can have a corrupt boot sector & track yet the drive will not issue
the hard disk fail error message. Rather the system will hang or fail to
boot.
Low level formatting (which it is NOT!) merely re-initializes the data
in the sectors on an ide drive while checking for bad spots. Unlike
older MFM drives, this is performed at a much higher level than IDE. For
the most part, unless you have a special hardware device which can lay
down the timing marks, you cannot really "low level format" an IDE
drive, even via the bios.
One thing though. If something screwed up the settings on your BIOS, you
may get this error, even though the drive is fine. This is because the
BIOS is being told to look for the first track somewhere it's not. Check
that the settings are set to how they used to be, or for AUTO detection
of the drive and AUTO for block mode.
-JMS
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Marcia L Waller
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 3:31 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [newbie] Primary master hard disk fail
Dear ALL,
Thank you for the advice. I wonder about the possibility of correcting
this hard drive problem. Oddly I can get my Northon Utilities 5.00 CD up
and I am viewing things but I do not how to use Disk Editor. I am
browsing with it but there do not seem to be extensive directions on how
to use it. Is there anyway that I can reformat my disk either with
Norton or using the HDD low level format in the BIOS? I have a feeling
this hard drive is not dead but could have been hit with a virus?
Strange characters show up with the boot up messages for hdb drive. I do
not care about saving files at this point. I just want to be able to use
my computer again and do a fresh install of LM8 again. Any advice will
be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Sincerely, Marcia
