What happened?

[vicki lynne]

A friend of mine brought me her computer to work on. She said that she wasn't internet capable but she just played games anyway. She said she played on it one day and when she went to boot up the next day it started saying "invalid system disk. replace disk and press..." This is what I've figured out so far. It's a Trigem commputer with an Intel Pentium processor, AMI Bios, 640Kb base with 80896 Ext. mem. It has a seagate hard drive. She says she was running an XP os. Don't know about that part. Any ideas what may have happened and how I might fix it?
Second question, On another computer I have a DIMM memory stick that has a factory sticker on it reading 256 mb. How come it only shows up in bios as a 128 mb. stick?

[Whyzman]

For the first computer I would download and run the Seagate harddrive diagnostics. How old is the friends computer? Have you checked for dust accummulation on the heatsink and innards?

[vicki lynne]

there's quite a bit of dust on all the innards. I'll clean that. Will the Seagate diagnostics run from floppy in bios? That's probably a stupid question, huh? It'ld have to. Thanx.

[Jiggy]

Will the Seagate diagnostics run from floppy in bios?
Yes it will run from floppy.

These mite help,

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q128730/

[vicki lynne]

thank you guys. I appreciate.

[Sylvander]

"invalid system disk. replace disk and press..."
The typical cause of this is leaving a non-bootable floppy disk in the FDD [don't do this], and the BIOS is set to boot the FDD before the HDD [this is ok].
Another possibility is that the CD-drive is also set [in the BIOS Setup] to boot before the HDD and a non-bootable CD has been left in the drive.
So you need to check these first before assuming the HDD has become non-bootable.

[vicki lynne]

Floppy and cd rom drives were the first things I checked. Both were empty. The seagate diagnostic utility says the hd is garbage so I put another one in. Now it doesn't want to read any hard drive at all!! It just says that I don't got one. I've tried to get it to auto detect several different ones now that I know work and it just keeps saying the same thing, ain't one there. I even tried telling it what it had and it told me uh-uh. Tried a different ide cable too, still uh-uh.. Any guesses?

[Whyzman]

Is this a blank harddrive? You cannot drop in a harddrive with an operating system already loaded into a different computer than it was originally designed to work on...

[Sylvander]

"Any guesses?"
Are the IDE controllers enabled in the BIOS Setup? [assuming the HDD is connected to the onboard IDE controllers]
If you have all the drives set to "Auto" in the BIOS Setup you should be able to see them [including the HDD] being detected and displayed on screen.
What is "IT" that isn't reading any HDD at all; the seagate diagnostic utility?

[saphalline]

Replace the CMOS battery.

[hockey man]

Can you plug it into your PC as a secondary and read any of the files?

She said that she wasn't internet capable. . .
What does this mean? Was she plugged into the internet? If so, what type of connection does she have? (Dial-up, DSL,. . .?)

[vicki lynne]

I hope I get all this in, no they aren't blank hdd. I've tried three, all with the same os as the original, if it is indeed xp like she said. Yes the hdd is connected to the onboard ide controllers and yes they are enabled in bios. Bios is whats not showing any hard drives when I set it to auto detect. Yes everything is set to auto detect as a rule, only when I get frustrated does that change, and then only for a minute. I put a brand new cmos battery in when I tried to boot the first time and the boot screen said the original failed. By not internet capable I mean there was no modem when I decased it. And yes, if I plug any of the three replacement hdd's into my computer as a secondary I can read the files. I think that's everything so far. Shoot some more at me and I'll try. :)

[saphalline]

Ooh, not looking good. Ok try this: put some random optical drives in there. Does it detect those?

If not, there's probably something wrong with the mobo. If yes, we'll have to run some more tests. :p

[vicki lynne]

O.k. maybe I'm just tired and the brain is not kicking in, and I'll probably feel really stupid here in a minute, but you lost me with random optical drives. You mean like cd rom?

[hockey man]

Yep. CD, DVD, CD-RW, DVD-RWs. Can you boot from a CD such as a Win XP CD?

[vicki lynne]

Well, I don't know what I tweaked, twisted, or turned upside down but when I put a cd-rom there it picked it right up. So I got brave and tried the hard drives again, it decided to see two of them finally and now it wants to tell me disk I/O error. What's this mean ?

[vicki lynne]

Oh, yeah, I haven't tried booting from the cd-rom with the xp disk, but I guess I should. I'll let you know.

[Sylvander]

See this http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/fail_Failure.htm

[vicki lynne]

I turned it on, went into bios, told it to boot from cd rom, put the xp disk in the cd rom and told it to go. The boot screen came up, told me that the keyboard, hdd, and cd rom were all there and installed, then it skipped a space and the little cursor has been sitting there blinking at me ever since. This has been almost thirty minutes ago and it's still blinking at me. I'm about to get a complex and drop kick it out the front door!! But then my friend wouldn't be very happy with me. Decisions, Decisions. Thanks for the link, it clarifies a few things.

[saphalline]

Do you have an older OS that you can try? Thinking back to the specs, it seems to me that an older Pentium or Pentium II with 80MB of RAM isn't really all that great for WinXP. It should still at least try to install, though, so probably restarting it might help, but WinXP in the long run will be kinda slow. To put it mildly. ;)

[Sylvander]

Try to access the files on the HDD using either:

A. A startup or boot floppy [not if NTFS partitions].

B. The "File Manager" or "Volkov Commander" on the bootable "Emergency Boot CD" [EBCD] below [will read NTFS & FAT partitions]. [a great tool to have in your "toolbox"]

1. How to make a free “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498
This makes it easier to boot a chosen drive [particularly the one holding the EBCD].

2. How to make a free EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
This has a number of useful utilities included including "Image" [for DOS, by Terabyte], "File Manager", a zero-fill program, FDISK.EXE & FORMAT.COM.

If you CAN access the files, then see this http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/fail_Failure.htm
Do you have an anti-virus program on a bootable disk so you can scan the HDD for infection ?
You could try using the "[B]Recover MBR" program on the EBCD if it's just a corrupted boot sector that you have.

If you decide to begin anew, then first zero-fill the drive using either the program on the EBCD or KillDisk from www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

[vicki lynne]

Ok I have tried to boot this computer from floppy with everything from win95a win 98c win 98se and win me. It always tells me invalid system disk. I don't know what else there is but dos and I don't speak dos. I'm lost.

[vicki lynne]

I just now tried to put the hdd behind mine as a secondary and mine wouldn't boot when I did. the boot screen told me "looking for boot record from ide 0 ok' then it said " invalid system disk on ide 1. What's this?

[vicki lynne]

what if system files were deleted? what then?

[saphalline]

It's starting to sound like the mobo, or at least that one IDE connector, is broken. Try putting the HDD as slave to the CD-ROM on the same cable. That's not as efficient, but it will prove a point one way or another.

[vicki lynne]

I put the hdd behind the cd rom and the bios wouldn't recognize either the hdd or the cd rom. What point did I prove. Please

[saphalline]

Oh wait a second! IDE 1 is bad? Hmmm...

Ok, now keep the CD-ROM and HDD as they are. But on the mobo's end, move their IDE cable from one connector to the other. So that their cable is plugged into the other IDE connector.

[vicki lynne]

Allright, when I did that the bios still didn't recognize either one. Now what?

[saphalline]

Ok then, bummer. Sounds like the mobo isn't working anymore. Not much else you can try if the drives work in other systems. And not much can be done if the mobo won't detect any drives.

I think it's dead. But wait another day, see if anyone else has any inspirations.

[vicki lynne]

ok, But I think I'll go ahead and start making arrangements for the funeral. Thanks. Oh yeah, please DON'T send flowers. :-)

[saphalline]

I'll send flower seeds. ;) They're cheaper.

[Whyzman]

Your observation that there was a lot of dust might possibly contribute to the IDE problem. You may just have a dust fragment messin' with the connection...or some oxidation going on. I would suggest powering down...make sure the motherboard is off by turning the power supply off and then pushing the case power button and holding it for a couple of seconds.

Plug and unplug the connections a few times or more....

One item: Harddrives with Windows XP are not all the same because when you load XP onto a particular computer it configures itself to the particular motherboard and other hardware present. So, when you attempt to swap a drive from another computer, same Operating System or not, it becomes quite confused... :( An XP disk is "generic" until loaded...then it becomes "computer specific."

[vicki lynne]

Ok. I didn't know that xp became particular after it was loaded on a hard drive. I'll try everything one more time before I throw dirt in it's face. :-) Thanks