HDD write protect error?

I haven't seen the PC yet, so I'm working on "second hand" info. But here is what I've been told:

My housemate installed a new NIC into his father's PC. He rebooted into Win98 and Win98 found the card and strated to install drivers. A further reboot was required. On final reboot, Win98 tried to update system config, but returned an error something like "write protect error drive c:".

By all accounts, my housemate has tried installing a brand new HDD and still gets same problem. He also says he's tried resetting BIOS settings (although I'm not sure exactly what he's done).

I've not been able to take a look at it yet, and it may be an easy one. But while I'm at work can anyone give me some ideas to take home with me? Anyone seen it before? Is it fixable?

My housemate seems convinced the HDD controller on the mobo is fried.

Cheers guys.

Dammit. Sorry guys - this is in totally the wrong place.

Er... I kind of want to post this topic in the correct plave but I know th emodeators hate it when you get multiple posts all over the place.

Er... Um... Not sure what to do now.

Ah well. If anyone can still help, I'd be grateful :)

No problem. I'll move it to the HDD/IDE forum. ;)

About the problem now.

Hmmm.. let's see..

This might be just some lost files, or something worse. Bad sectors!

The problem is, you say he put a brand-new drive on and still has the same problem. Maybe he left the old one on, the system detects the error and just reports it.

On the other hand, maybe there are some corrupted files on.

You definitely have to see it for yourself to know.

Hope this helps..

Thanks AlienDyne :)

It must be someting fairly straightforward - I can't believe that the HDD controller is damaged, otherwise the BIOS would not see it, right? I'm thinking it's probably the HDD that is faulty. Maybe an fdisk, format would cure it?

Hmmm. I'll let you know.

Anytime!

No, I wouldn't say it's the controller.

Yeah, it must be something wrong with the files on the drive. Probably a format would help.

OK - so I've just given the guy a call. (I'm at work, on New Years Eve, and I'm bored - ok?)

He says he's trid formatting and even fdisk. When trying to format, it does not complete (and gives similr sort of error as before). When trying to fdisk he's unable to save changes.

This is with 2 different HDDs. 1 HDD was the original, and the other is a known working HDD that is fine in another system.

He says everything worked fine till he installed the new NIC. He reckons he must have damaged something when he installed the NIC.

It's a wierd one. It's a bit sad, but I'm kind of looking forward to going home to have a look at it :)

Maybe I've been in tech support too long :D

Hehe.. Although it's new year's eve I'm working too!!! :(

Don't worry. He must be doing something wrong, or both the drives are faulty.

I'm sure you'll figure it out when you get home.

Good luck!

Re "what do I do when I put it in the wrong forum" - YOU can delete the whole topic if you started it, then cut and paste the contents to a new post in the right forum...less work for our hard pressed mods....

Re your hard disk problem Init 13 support perhaps? Can't quite remember the details but I've had this before in slightly different circumstances. Its something written in the mbr of the disk which decides how the disk is subsequently handled this comes from the Bios and NVRam and o/s choice of the original disk.

Here's a link that confirms what I'm on about <a href="http://193.6.40.1/~cellux/pc-guide/mbr_asm_eng.html" target="_blank">some gobbledegook about MBR</a>

So clear CMOS and low level format the offending disk, try and do the format and fdisk from the o/s you want installed(so use the cd to boot from).

If you want to try and save the original disk see if re-writting the mbr helps.

And here's another link from a bit better source which tells you about that <a href="http://www.ontrack.com/hardwareinfo/fdisk.asp" target="_blank">Ontrack</a>

Dude - excellent stuff. Thanks for your reply.

(I didn't know that I could delete topics... Sorry 'bout that AlienDyne!)

Ok - so first thing to try has gotta be an fdsik /mbr. But I'm looking through the links and there is a lot of good stuff there. Thanks confus-ed. I'll give it a try.

from a hardware standpoint, It's been my experience that the major components that can cause the write error messages are:

Hard Drive - obviously! try to get the manufactures diagnostic hardware from the web and run it to verify the drive

RAM - don't know why RAM can cause this problem, but I've seen a few machines with these errors straighten up with simple RAM swaps

Motherboard - usually unlikely though possible. just plug the hard drive into antother board (prefferably the same model) to test

Power Supply - I've seen this one more than any other! A cheap supply can send a surge or even cut out for a moment and cause the write error. Try swapping a known working high quality supply (ANTEC, ENERMAX)

It could be a lot of other things, but these are the culprits I see most often

Cheers, Kato.

I've got the machine in front of me now, and have checked all the stuff I could think of. Never even thought about the PSU!

HDD checks out in a different machine. Tried a different cable. Haven't tried switching RAM yet, but have a few DIMMs laying about. Thanks for the tips - will have a go at swapping a few bits around.

I'll post if I find the cause.