SCSI HDD not booting

[khensonm]

On Monday the 27th I turned on my Dell Precision 410. The boot got as far as displaying the lower 3/4 of the Windows98 startup screen and then KAPLOOIE! Complete freeze-up.

So I pushed the bubblegum fix (reset) button, and it did the same thing again. So I turned off the power, waited a while, and rebooted.
This time the first thing I saw on my screen was "Primary hard disk drive 0 not found" (not good).
The bootup proceeded to the Ultra2-LVD BIOS (Adaptec AIC-7890 SCSI BIOS Dell-v.2.01.05), then to the CD's Adaptec AIC-7880 SCSI BIOS, and finally requested me to press F1 (continue) or F2 (setup).

The setup doesn't see my SCSI HDD. F1 does nothing.

I found some diagnostic software on the Dell site for testing an IDE hard drive (Dell 90/90 HDD IDE hddct132.exe -- Hard Drive Confidence Test). However, I can't find anything for a SCSI drive.

I'm hoping that this isn't as bad as it looks! Any suggestions?

-- Kate

[mjc]

Got an emergency disk for your AV program?

You can also download an AV program that will run from DOS here (http://www.bootdisk.com). Since this happened first thing in the morning on the 27th I would explore the virus route first...CIH(Chernobyl) is still around and it activates in the 26th (one version on the 26th of every month)

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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!

[khensonm]

Thanks mjc!

Now I have a dumb follow-up question.
How do I get an emergency disk for my AV program?
I have Norton AV, and have now downloaded F-PROT from the site you suggested. Is there some option in F-PROT to make an emergency disk? I can't find one in Norton AV.

The F-PROT that I downloaded creates a disk with a zipped F-PROT.exe and accompanying files, as well as unzip.exe. The trick is that it unzips to C:, which doesn't exist! I tried changing C: to D: (RAMdrive created by the Win98 boot disk) in the batch file that does the unzipping, but there isn't enough space, even if I get rid of everything on D: but COMMAND.COM.

What (probably simple) point am I missing?

-- K

[David]

The version of Norton AV I have, uses a bootable CD-ROM disc that can be used as a rescue disk. I'm not sure if you need to change any settings to boot from the SCSI CD-ROM drive. Consult the AIC-7880 card documentation if you have trouble with that.

[mjc]

The version I downloaded from there sets up its own ramdisk, sorry. You can edit the autoexec file on the startup disk. Find the ramdrive line and make it something around 8MB or larger (I think the MS program can go as large as 16MB...8000KB should do it, yeah I know it isn't quite really 8MB but close enough). Or you could create an emergency disk from another computer that has Norton on it...(it may not quite work to restore any files if made on another machine but it should scan)

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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!