On Thu, 15 Mar 2001 15:20:11 -0600 daybrown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Mr. Dos" wrote:
>> Computer was working fine for years, now when I boot (Win95) I get a "missing
>> operating system prompt." If I boot from a floppy and try to change to c:
>> drive it prompts "invalid drive specification." Wouldn't let me scan for
>> virus's with a boot floppy (although I'm sure it's not a virus because I
>> don't use the internet or any floppies on that computer). Any ideas? (if
>> this has been discussed before, I apologize). Thanks.
<snip>
The same thing would happen to me on one of my computers if I were to boot
from a floppy. The hard drive would be "an invalid drive specification".
I would get that error message even if there were nothing trashed on my hard
drive. The simple explanation for this is that I have a special "overlay
program" written into the MBR of my HD. I need to use the overlay program
to enable the ancient BIOS in my old computer to recognize the modern hard
drive, which is way too huge to have been recognized by the older BIOS. In
order to boot from a floppy, and then to have my hard drive recognized by the
BIOS, I first have to press a keystroke combination immediately after turning
on the computer. Then I will get a message telling me to insert my boot
disk. I do that, press enter, my machine boots from the floppy, and then I
am able to to change to the hard drive. If your hard drive had such an
overlay program written into the MBR, then that could be the cause of the
problem. Of course the problem could be due to a lot of other possible
causes, but the possibility that an overlay program might have been written
into the MBR is something that should be checked into.
Good luck!
Sam Heywood
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