problems galore

[lozza]

I had w2k advanced server on my main harddrive, then win 98 on another so I could use dos, my ancient motherboard stopped booting off the floppy drive and furthur checks revealed that its floppy controller is busted - tried to format c: drive (win 2k) and i think it formated but not now its not working it will go to c drive but then any commands i try come up with error- abort, retry, fail. Now I cant install win 98 on my main drive because its not responding at all (and I cant get it to format properly) and my backup drive with win 98 doesn't boot up 98 at all (have a feling that 98 no longer exists). Putting in the 98 se cd at startup - I can get to dos, and Win 98se wont install becuase to format c: drive it wants to use my floppy boot disk - whoops no working floppy drive!!!! And win 95 wont install because it freezes at the same point every time.

Putting it mildly I think I'm in a no wi situation - any help will be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[Dani_mq]

the hard drive with win2k was using nfts? if so use fdisk to create a new partition in fat32. format and you're done

 

[Toejam31]

Are you positive the floppy drive controller on the mainboard is dead? The cable could be bad, connnected in reverse, or the floppy drive itself might need to be replaced. Floppy drives often become dirty and then refuse to identify a disk. In any case, I'd replace the cable and the drive and see if this corrects the problem. If not, then a new mainboard may be in order.

In the meantime, you should try to get access to another computer where you can connect the hard drives. For the primary drive that contained Win2K server, this should be jumpered and connected as a primary slave, and then a program like Partition Magic 7 from PowerQuest can be used to format the system partition. Or a downloadable disk utility from the manufacturer can be used to low level format the disk, after which, you can use FDISK or the utility to recreate the partition(s).

As for the slaved drive with Win98, all that may be necessary is for you to be able to use FDISK to make the system partition active so that it is bootable. Then the drive can be jumpered as the master. If Win98 is intact, this should allow you to reach the operating system GUI. If this isn't applicable, with access to another system with a working floppy drive, you'll at least be able to format the system partition in preparation for reinstalling an operating system.

Note: Be sure that when attempting to boot with a floppy drive and a <A HREF="http://www.mirrors.org/archived_software/www.bootdisk.com/original.htm" target="_new">boot disk</A> that this is selected as the first bootable device in the BIOS setup. It sounds to me like your first bootable device is CDROM, and this could be the source of the entire problem.

Toejam31

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