[RESOLVED] Can't boot, need help please!!!

[Don Theoret]

Hey all,

I don't think this problem is y2k related. My computer was working fine for most of the day yesterday but I went to boot it last night and after POST, IDE Channel detection,
and after the WIN98 logo pops up, the autoexec.bat and config.sys process and then I get the following message:

Data Error Reading drive C:
Abort, Retry, Fail:

If I abort I can access all harddrives (C,D,E) fully but if I try to start Windows by typing win.com I get the same error
message. If I run a directory listing in C: with a /s it'll start to give me a listing of the directory and then give me the same Error message.

I ran an older version of Norton AntiVirus that I had on floppy and when I ran it it told me it was unable to read the boot record on drives C,D,and E and gave me a "Drive
Access Error".

I didn't install anything or change any settings before this problem occured.

I hope I've included enough info. for someone here to help me out. Either reply here or to [email protected]

Thanks and Happy Millenium!
Don Theoret

[brett]

It sounds as though part of the drive has errors. Have you tried using a boot disk and running scandisk with a surface scan to see if there are any bad sectors. If this is the case scandisk should mark them and you should be able to reload win 9x. But then your drive may fail later as well.

[Hater]

seen that a couple of times your hardive is really close to being toast . would recommend getting a new drive and was nortons ghost to transfer as much as possible to the good drive hope this helps
the scandisk idea is a really good one too. and if by some chance it's a Western digital drive go to there home page and download wd diag and see if maby that can fix some of the problem

[Grafman]

I believe you'd better go HDD shopping. If there is any really important data on your drive, I wouldn't mess with it any more. Just boot up with a good start diskette and copy all it would let me to one of the other drives. The more you mess with it, the greater chance of complete failure, then you're screwed. After you have saved your data, you have nothing to lose by trying to fix it. Sometimes a low-level format will straighten out a cranky HDD, but I'd never use it for anything critical again.
Rotsa Ruck

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