Can someone help me?
I was given this emachines eTower 333cs running Windows 98SE that I’d like to use as a second computer if I can get it to work properly. It has an intermittent boot problem. Sometimes it boots up fine (about 40% of the time) and other times (about 10%) it boots to the emachines logo and freezes, and other times (about 50%) it registers a boot failure reading “200: Boot Failure. 203: Insert boot diskette in A: Press any key when ready”. At this time it goes to the Win98 startup menu: “1. Start computer w/cd rom support; 2: Start computer w/o cd rom support; 3: View the help file”.
(Before I go on I should mention that when it boots fine it beeps once and when it doesn’t boot properly sometimes it beeps 3 and sometimes it beeps once. Each time I shut it down after a proper boot it beeps 3 times).
So, if I choose 1 or 2 from the above choices I get the message “Windows detected that drive c does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. There are several possible causes: 1. The drive may need to be partitioned. To create a partion run Fdisk from the MSDOS command prompt. 2. You may be using 3rd party disk partitioning software (I’m not). 3. Some viruses also cause your drive c not to register.”
“The diagnostic tool were successfully loaded to drive c.
When I go to drive c and check the directory I see the same files as you would see on a startup disk. No windows directory shows up.
When I run the Fdisk command on drive c I get the message “no fixed disks present”. When I run the fomat command on drive c I get the message “ format not supported on drive c: format terminated.
I used the recovery cd which supposedly returned the computer to it’s original out of the box state but I still have the exact same problem as before.
Is the hard drive going bad? Could it be a memory problem? Could it be a faulty power supply? How about the processor? (The fans on the processor and power supply are both working).
Well, I’ve gone on long enough. Any ideas anyone? Thanks for any help.

1. Hard drive going bad (open it up and look at who made the drive and grab the diagnostics from the drive manufacturer's site)


2. Flaky power supply, since the problem only happens some of the time the PSU may not be supply the proper voltage (probably on the 12 volt leg) all the time....emacahines uses a special type of PSU (a microATX).

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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.

Hi Turbot and welcome to the PCGuide forums.

The fault you describe could have several causes.
Are there any loose connections internally? A loose IDE cable would give this sort of problem.
When you boot with the boot floppy, can you see the CD drive i.e get a directory listing?
If you can boot into windows, does device manager show the disks and interface without error?

It could be the hard disk failing, but an intermittent fault is unlikely. The loose connection is the most probable.

David

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If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the man, but disimprove the cat.

Mark Twain

I could find no loose cables. I pushed down on all of them however I did not unplug the HD ribbon cable from the mobo and reseat it. I did unplug the wiring harness from the power supply to the HD and reseat it.
When I boot with cd-rom support I can get the D drive (cd-rom drive) prompt. When I type dir at the D drive prompt I get the message "CDR100 Not ready reading drive D Abort, Retry, Fail. When I boot without cd-rom support and type D: I get the message "Invalid drive specification".
When I do get into the Windows device manager it does show the disks and interfaces without error.
I could find no diagnostic info on the Trigem HD at their website. They say the manufacturer varies. As far as the power supply goes they sell a replacement one that supplies 145W as opposed to the flimsy little 112W one that's currently in the case.

You actually need to look at the drive to get the manufacturer info, I'm going to guess that it is a Samsung...also if the drive is set to autodetect in the BIOS then is should list out the model number, quite often entering the drive model number on Google (http://www.google.com) will bring up good results...



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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.

I did just as you said mjc and you are right, it is a Samsung HD. I got the diagnostics and will be running tests shortly. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I ran the diagnotics on the HD and it passed the test. No problem found with the HD. Immediately after I ran the diagnostics I went to the c drive and did a Dir command and the c drive showed all the files and directories including Windows and not just the start-up files as was the case before.
I ran fdisk and checked the partition table and everything was fine there. I then opened the case and checked the cables again for secure connection and any visual signs. I closed the case and started the computer but it wouldn't boot. Back to square one!
I have a few questions: When I ran the recovery cd did it actually partition and re-format the HD? If so, then I can rule out any virus, right? If I rule out viruses then the problem points to either bad cables or a bad power supply. Am I on to something? Am I missing anything?
Thanks for all replies.

One other possibility...bad CMOS battery...swap tht out, reset the BIOS to defaults and try from there...I believe that eMachines defaults to the drives being auto detected, if not change them to autodetect.

The cables going bad is also a possibilty, since this machine uses the standard IDE cable they are fairly cheap, replacing them won't be too costly.

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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.

Here's an update on my problem.
I replaced the memory, cables, cmos battery, and power supply. I also reset the bios to default. I still have the same problem. I ran the HD diagnostics on the hard drive and it came out good. I ran norton utilities on the HD and it says I have a damaged boot record. I ran the fdisk /mbr command but it appears to not correct the problem. Keep in mind that early on in all this I did a recovery using the emachines recovery disk which returned the machine to it's original out of the box state. If the boot record was damaged this process should have fixed it, right? So now I'm thinking the HD may be bad. Any more ideas on what to do next?

Oh! and one other thing, I replaced the fan on the cpu. It's really quiet now!

Turbot, hi,
I'm still new here and as green as they come but could you try the hard drive on another pc? Because if Norton's is stating you have a damaged boot record, I would think that it's the motherboard's chipset that has lost some info to boot properly through the dos section until the windows or what your using can take over. Maybe others will chime in and either agree or correct me...but it would be worth a try.

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This space for George Carlin quotes:

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

(He should broaden that to pc's.)

Hello turbot

You could have a Boot Sector Virus. don't rule it out.

You said
"I ran norton utilities on the HD and it says I have a damaged boot record."

YOU HAVE A DAMAGED BOOT RECORD.

QUOTE
"Most PC boot-sector infections can be cured by the following simple process.

Pay particular care to make the checks in Steps 2 and 3.

Note that removing an MBR virus in the following way may not be desirable, and may even cause valuable information to be lost.

For instance, the One_Half virus gradually encrypts the infected hard drive "inwards" (starting from the "end" and moving towards the beginning), encrypting two more tracks at each boot. The information about the size of the encrypted area is *only* stored in the MBR.
If the virus is removed using the method above, this information will be irrecoverably lost and part of the disk with unknown size will remain encrypted.

1. Boot the PC from a clean system floppy--this must be MS-DOS 5.0 or version 6.0 or higher of PC-DOS or DR DOS. This diskette should carry copies of the DOS utilities MEM, FDISK, CHKDSK, UNFORMAT and SYS. (See G8 for help on making an emergency boot diskette.)

2. Check that your memory configuration is "normal" with MEM (see C10 for assistance here). Check that your hard disk partitioning is normal--run FDISK and use the "Display partition information" option to check this. MS-DOS 5.0 (or later) users can use UNFORMAT /L /PARTN.

3. Try doing a DIR of your hard disk/s (C:, D:, etc). You should continue with Step 4 *only* if all the tests in Step 2 and this step pass. Do *NOT* continue if you were unable to correctly access *all* your hard disks, as you will quite possibly damage critical information making permanent data damage or loss more likely.

4. Replace the program (code) part of the MBR by using the MS-, or PC-DOS FDISK /MBR command. If you use DR DOS 6.0, or later, select the FDISK menu option "Re-write Master Boot Record".

5. Replace the DOS boot sector using the command SYS C: (or whatever is correct for your first hard disk partition). For this step, the version of DOS on your boot diskette must be *exactly* the same as is installed on your hard disk (this may mean you have to first reboot with a clean boot diskette other than that used in Step 1). If you are using a disk compression system, such as DoubleSpace of DriveSpace, check the documentation on how to locate the physical drive on which the compressed volume is installed, and apply the SYS command to that instead. Usually this is drive H: or I:.

6. Reboot from your hard disk and check that all is well--if not (which is unlikely if you made the recommended checks), seek expert help.

7. As you will get re-infected by forgetting an infected diskette in your A: drive at boot time, you have to clean all your floppies as well. This is harder, as there is no simple way of doing this with standard DOS tools. You can copy the files from each of your floppies, re-format them and copy the files back, but this is a very tedious process (and prone to destructive errors!). At this point you probably should consider obtaining some good antivirus software. FDISK /MBR will only overwrite the boot loader code in the MBR of the *first* hard drive in a system. However, a few viruses will infect both drives in a two drive system. Although the second hard drive is never booted from in normal PC configurations, should the second drive from such a machine ever be used as the first drive in a system, it will still be infected and in need of disinfecting."
END OF QUOTE

What was the exact error that Norton was spitting out?

You may need to start over with a boot disk, fdisk, (to remove the current partition), fdsisk again to create a new partition (yes this needs to be done even if you only are going to set up one partition), then format the disk...then run the restore CD.....the emachines restore may not actually format the disk, it may just overwrite everything on it, in which case no, it wouldn't have fixed it (nothing that emcahines does would surprise me very much, they have pulled some real bonehead moves....)

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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.

Final update on this problem. Thanks to all who offered solutions.
I followed most of them and was not successful in repairing the boot record. Eventually the computer failed to recognize the HD at all.
I managed to get (for free) a 5GB HD and installed, partitioned, and formated it and everything works fine now. My goal in fixing the computer was realized and I learned something to boot!
turbot