boot problem in newly assembled pc

[tad]

Just finishes dealing with one problem with the assembling pc before this next one started.
Anyway now it identifies the hard drive (interestingly if the hard drive is jumpered to represent as primary master,
the bios does not detect it. but if i jumper it as a single drive and use a different cable for the cd-rom as secondary master
instead of primary slave, the bios detects the hard drive as primary master!!. Im not sure if this portents something
serious.)

Anyway, so the boot went thru and it identified the sound card, modem assigning them irqs.

But at the stage of the :"boot disk not found, enter system disk and hit enter " another problem has arisen. i placed the
windows 98 boot disk (which came with the windows 98 installation cdrom) in the floppy drive and hit enter. i could hear
the churning sound of the floppy drive being read and then the cursor on the screen continues to blink indefinetly while the
floppy drive indicator has vanished and the drive is all quiet. I repeated this by placing the same floppy int eh drive and then
swithcing on the computer. The same result at the end of post.

Does this mean i need a different kind of disk to first partition the hard drive. should i try making a startup disk from a
differnet windows 95 or 98 computer or does it mean the floppy drive is not working. also if i am to make a dos boot disk,
other than fdisk, config.sys,
command.com, what other files should i copy?

P.s. i looked at the contents of the windows 98 installation boot disk i.e the one i tried and failed, and it does contain fdisk, command, config etc. So
maybe the problem is elsewhere unless its an older copy.
any ideas?

thanks

[ixl]

Hi Tad,
Assuming you have not changed your boot order, you should be able to boot from that floppy. There's a chance that your floppy or drive may be bad. First thing I would do: try another Win98 boot disk, from a friend perhaps, and/or try your book disk in someone else's machine.
Keep us posted.

------------------
Charles M. Kozierok ( ixlubb@PCGuide.com )
Webslave, The PC Guide (http://www.PCGuide.com)
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...

[dale]

Your odd hard drive detection might be part of the problem. You haven't really "booted", the BIOS just found a bunch of hardware and did some low level setup. You might have a cable plugged in backwards (make sure the red stripe on your ribbon cables face towards pin 1 on all cables). I have also found that on some proprietary systems, you have to use a cable select cable and/or put your drive into cable select mode, instead of using the master/slave option on the jumpers.

dale

[tad]

thanks,
you were absolutely right. infact i wnet thru your troubleshooting pages for the floppy drive stuff. first thing i notice the cmos didnt have the floppy drive enabled (i wonder why the default is disabled). still had no luck. My friends were out and the closest one was a win95 . And microsoft doesnt bother to keep a boot disk on their site. Luckily i got a link to a page from one of the guys in the pc-homebult news gorup and managed to make abootable disk. it finally worked.

the computer is now well and running.
But i do have some wierd activity:
1. on two occassions, when i restarted the computer after being powered down for a long time, the computer would not even pass the post stage (i.e no beep and nothing on the monitor). but when i swithced off and restarted it went thru without a hassle. Does this portent something?

thnaks
tad


Originally posted by ixl:
Hi Tad,
Assuming you have not changed your boot order, you should be able to boot from that floppy. There's a chance that your floppy or drive may be bad. First thing I would do: try another Win98 boot disk, from a friend perhaps, and/or try your book disk in someone else's machine.
Keep us posted.

[tad]

HI DALE,
the comps running as ive written above. thanks. the harddisk detection is interesting. it detects it only if its in the sinlge drive mode (jumper set as that), while it doesnt detect it in the master mode. yet the bios reprts the former as a primary master!! I rechecked the cables, they seem fine with the right orientation. and this isnt a proprietary configuration, so that shouldnt be problem here
strange


Originally posted by dale:
Your odd hard drive detection might be part of the problem. You haven't really "booted", the BIOS just found a bunch of hardware and did some low level setup. You might have a cable plugged in backwards (make sure the red stripe on your ribbon cables face towards pin 1 on all cables). I have also found that on some proprietary systems, you have to use a cable select cable and/or put your drive into cable select mode, instead of using the master/slave option on the jumpers.

dale