I have a good one for you all, and i dont even have the tower unit yet!
I am due to receive my brother in laws pc, to try and fix it.
He says it was a virus destroyed his HDD.
Any initial checks that I can perform would be appreciated.-my best outcome(and a few beers) would be achieved by a clean wipe and install.
Any pointers? I know it may be early days, but it arrives in the morning-I shall post more then.
Any early thoughts?
Such is life.
A few rules for electronics/computer servicing.
1. The customer lies. Not maliciously but out of embarassment. They don't want you to know the dumb thing they did. Ignor what your brother in law told you and check everything for yourself, even down to the power and ide cables.
2. Download the hd manufacturors dianostics. They are usually free and very comprehensive. And the maker knows more about the drive than anyone else so they seem to work better.
3. Try to locate any drivers you need before you wipe the drive. A lot of hardware manufacturers have gone out of business lately and you may need to go in with a boot floppy and rescue some from the drive if they aren't lost already. Make certain you have a boot floppy with the cdrom drivers, that allows you to access the rom drive. Don't forget the external dos command files you need for commands fdisk, format, edit, xcopy, etc.
Viruses don't destroy hardware as a rule, if a virus was responsible a clean install should fix it. I would go clear down to repartitioning with fdisk just to be sure, but reformatting will likely do it.
I'm sure others can add to the list, but these are a few off the top of my head.
Ummmm.
I seem to have pressed 'format' 'C'...hehe
Anyway, it really is an old nasty pc.
It did actually boot, but not very well.
But then I wiped it.
Anybody know MsDos etc?
I got a win98 boot disc, but unsure what to do next. (i got it from web)
I can get an 'A' prompt or change it to 'C'. Thats it
What do I need to check next..it still thinks there is no CD drive.
Thanks in advance...ps It is so old the BIOS wont allow to boot from CD-thats why I got boot disc. Stuck!
Such is life.
well to boot the 98 disk just change to that drive and type setup and hit enter.
Well, first try changing to d. With the win98 cd in the drive, type at the a:\> (a: prompt).
d:
dir
If your boot floppy was any good, you'll see a directory listing of the cdrom. If not, try e: then f:. You need to find the letter assignment for the cdrom. If the floppy doesn't work this thread may end up rather long.
Once you see the listing just type
setup
and away you go.
I'm guessing you tried that and it didn't work. First, check to see if the cdrom ide cable attaches to the sound card. Hope not because those are a pain. What you need to do is locate hardware specific dos mode drivers for the cdrom (and if your unlucky, also for the soundcard). These have to be copied to the floppy, along with mscdex.exe (probably on the floppy already). Try the manufacturers websites. Their are also driversites and message boards on the net. Next, you'll need to edit config.sys and autoexec.bat on the floppy to load these drivers as you boot. It's not as bad as it sounds but it helps if you have done it before. Hope your hardware vendors are all still in buisness. That can be a real headache.
Most Microsoft os cd's aren't bootable by the way. After all, that would make sense.
Goodluck.
Last edited by kevinalm; 10-16-2002 at 12:09 AM.
