subject: Packard Bell Legend 402cd

customer complains the machine will not boot.

errors- 'disk drive not ready'

will not post.

Upon receiving this pc, it (win95) initially booted up just fine. No errors, nothing.

Then after about 15 minutes BSOD. Total freeze; tried to reboot machine could not find the HDD.

decided that there was a possible mbr virus;

inserted win95 bootdisk tried to fdisk;

(also tried with a win98 bootdisk)

comes up with the message " No fixed disks present";

This machine has the famously non-working Master Restore..lala CD.. which was useless.

ran DEGUG routine, that I have used before (always succesfully) when dealing with older HDD's (getting difficult ones ready for fdisk-int13) and for clearing CMOS completely.

this failed to work .

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif !!

power supply??.. but everything seemed ok.. one thing I noticed in the brief time that it was up and running was that it had not had scandisk or defrag run in 687 days, and had (2) confilcts in device manager. When I tried to reboot to safe mode to fix these (and get rid of comet cursor) the above occured.

?


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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 08-28-2001).]

It could simply be the drive is failing. How about a self booting diag like TuffTest (http://www.tufftest.com/)? Also, try reseating the IDE cable or replacing them. Reseating the memory and other perfs may also be needed. Corrosion may be inhibiting proper connectivity. Clean out the memory sockets and other slots as well as the IDE slots. All in all, it really sounds like a dying hard drive. Any odd sounds coming from the drive? When you place your hand on it, do feel the drive spinning or the heads moving when you try to access it? Is the drive a Seagate?

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thanks for your quick reply PostCode.. (saw you here dealing w/ another PB and was hoping you were still available.. as you seem to know your stuff in this area).

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif


yes, as you know this is a pretty old one, I think I will put another HDD I have lying here into it and see what happens.. customer claims this pc had not problems up until a week or two ago.

nothing added/deleted... installed/uninstalled....... but who knows..

hehe

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)


;)~

thanks for your quick reply PostCode.. (saw you here dealing w/ another PB and was hoping you were still available.. as you seem to know your stuff in this area).

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif


yes, as you know this is a pretty old one, I think I will put another HDD I have lying here into it and see what happens.. customer claims this pc had not problems up until a week or two ago.

nothing added/deleted... installed/uninstalled....... but who knows..

hehe

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)


;)~

No problem. Hope you able to fix it. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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BiosCentral (http://www.bioscentral.com)
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Yep, a different harddrive would be my first tinker choice. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Good luck, Sea.

BB 66


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"Right turn Clyde!"

DOH! Can't edit my post since it's not the last one. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif Please excuse the pathetic grammer. hehe

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What are all these older PSs designed with a self destruct date? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

Also check/replace the battery (some PBs don't have easily replaceable batteries, though)

And here (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/8774/) (PB info)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Gun Control...hitting what you aim at!

update:

put in another HDD;

ran fdisk;

format c: /s

at D: prompt typed setup, got message 'bad command......'

It has (1) current fixed disk drive:

C: 1 Status: A Type: PRI DOS (no volume label) Mbytes: 1906- Sytem: UNKNOWN- Usage: 100%

set active;

tried again;

at "D: prompt" this time it STARTED... initializing....

then;
"Cannot create a temporary directory.
If I have HPFS or NTFS on your hard drive, you will need to create an MS-DOS boot partition to set up windows"

thought that's what I already had done.


I have NO idea what this HDD had on it before.
http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)




[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 08-28-2001).]

If it's possible, I would seriously pull the original drive and attach it to another machine and pull any data you can off it before doing anything. Just to show the customer that you at least tried to do some data backup.

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BiosCentral (http://www.bioscentral.com)
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that was the 1st thing I tried to do...

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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)


;)~

You da man. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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not even... on other HDD - after fdisk and format, can still not install.

@ the "D:" prompt type "setup"- and get "Bad command or file name."

ran scandisk /all

nogood.

.................................................. ....... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif


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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 08-28-2001).]

What about trying to copy the cab files over and run setup from the hard drive?

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only thing I can figure.....

the "new" HDD I put in was one of two in another system that arrived non-working.. and I am now assuming that that machine was dual drive/OS NT and win9x.

will attempt the other 'spare'.. perhaps this one is/was win9x.

I don't know why the DEBUG routine didn't get rid of any NTFS partitions.

it is supposed to clear ANY type..

bla
http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

thanks for sticking here...

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)


;)~

Here is the debug routine I allows use. Hope it helps out:


F 9000:0 L 200 0
A
MOV DX,9000
MOV ES,DX
XOR BX,BX
MOV CX,0001
MOV DX,0080
MOV AX,0301
INT 13
INT 20
<Press enter twice>
U 100 L 12 <Displayed what you to entered to confirm>
G <To execute the program>
Q <To exit debug>

I'm sure you know the last bit there but I wnated to add it all for everyone else to use. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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There is a nifty little utility (by MS...they don't tell you about it, of course, you have to hunt it down...from NT3.51) called delpart that is supposed to wipe out ANY partition info.....here (http://rustysmith.com/delpart.htm)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Gun Control...hitting what you aim at!

[This message has been edited by mjc (edited 08-29-2001).]

Postcode, I have not tried the routine yet, I will if delpart does not work.

mjc, cool app., it identifies Drive 1 MBR -1 one Partition- Boot -yes- size= 1906 Type= MS-DOS 16 bit FAT>32MB.

it doesn't show any other partitons???

what do you guys think ??

(as a side note, I tried both 16 and 32 FAT)- with same results.


http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 08-29-2001).]

This is gonna sound stupid, but off the top of my head, what about another drive ribbon?

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BiosCentral (http://www.bioscentral.com)
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why not??

lol

but right now I need to know if I should delete the one partition above with the program from mjc.

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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)


http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif~

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 08-29-2001).]

As long as you have the data backed up, go for it. I'm trying to find a tool I have...it's called BLAST and writes zeros tot he MBR. Works with ANY OS as the MBR is the MBR....dosen't matter what's there, it's zeros now. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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BiosCentral (http://www.bioscentral.com)
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Send me your email again. I'm in Linux. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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BiosCentral (http://www.bioscentral.com)
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hehe. It dosen't crash on me. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif YGM. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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