-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 8/13/2003 7:50 PM +0000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I am hoping this is the proper place to ask. I was using a 486 > Zenith with MS-DOS 3.3 until it stopped working today. When I > turned it on, the only thing that came on the screen was the > error message "This is not a bootable partition". Pressing F2 > does nothing. Any suggestions anyone? > > I don't know the Bios because that doesn't come up now. It's kind of hard to give you more specific information since you haven't provided much information, but I'll do what I can. I assume you normally enter the BIOS of the system by pressing F1, F2, F10, Escape, or Delete while the system POSTs. It was common for some systems to include the "BIOS" setup application on a special partition of the hard disk drive. I know that older Tandy and Compaq systems had this "feature". It just may be that partition is damaged, so you can't access your BIOS or boot the hard disk, but your data may be fine. It's also possible, and somewhat more likely that the hard disk in the system died completely. This would be complicated further if the system setup code is stored on the hard disk itself. Assuming that IS NOT the case, I would recommend that you download a good MS-DOS boot disk. Get an MS-DOS 3.3 boot disks: <http://www.oldstuff.myagora.net/powerload/bootdisk/msd330bd.zip> on another machine and write it to a disk using WinImage on Windows, "dd" on UNIX, or "Disk Copy Plus" for MS-DOS. If the system can boot that disk, you should check and see if you can access your hard disk, by entering "C:". If so, a simple "SYS C:" may make the disk bootable with DOS 3.3 again. If not, see if "fdisk" utility reports a drive present. If not, you probably need to replace the drive. If it's there but corrupted or has no partitions on it, you'll have to recreate the partition or partitions, format, and reinstall DOS. For a 486, I'd recommend using a later MS-DOS version. You have some great choices now, including DR-DOS, PC-DOS, PTS-DOS, ROM-DOS, FreeDOS, MS-DOS 6.22 or MS-DOS "7.10" which was the updated DOS included with Windows 98SE. I can assist you with installing an up-to-date DOS release possible if you find that course of action necessary. Let us know what kind of drives you have in your system. Do you have a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy drive? Do you have ISA, EISA, VLB, or maybe a PCI bus in your system? Know the date it was made? What kind of hard disks and controller is in the box? Everything should work easily for MFM, RLL, and IDE disks, but SCSI systems may need special drivers to work fully. Hope you can boot a floppy and find your data OK. - -- Jeff Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] - --- A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. -- Lao Tsu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.3.2 iD8DBQE/OuM3+kOlYvxmiZYRAheoAKCrcYTr4EqEbjZ2J13jnY03TeKFFgCguCUy B6bbGFr8wZXgrQjQDBCD6U4= =lA7M -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
