primary HDD error??

[Pete Burke]

I can't boot up my PC right because it say's my primary dive is D:\
and my vertual drive is C:\. When I go to boot it up I get
"primary HDD error" I formatted C but now it tell's me there is not any space. Is my hard drive gone?

[AwARe]

Hello Pete! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

If you have or can get a "Win95b" boot disk, try using that instead.....
Could be a quick and easy solution....(I keep one around for that exact reason) That is if I understand what the problem is correctly........

Win95b boot disk has FAT32 and large disk support, does "not" create a virtual drive.....

I have had this happen several times on "certain" mother boards......
The 95b disk has always solved the problem

Unfortunately Ive never taken the time to find out exactly what the cause is (since using the other boot disk "always" got me up and running)

Hopefully it will get you up and running as well.............

Im also assuming since you didnt post it, that you are trying to install Win98?

Good Luck!
Hope This Helps!

[This message has been edited by AwARe (edited 05-13-2001).]

[Paleo Pete]

I'm not clear on the problem here, a bit more info might help a lot.

Are you booting to a start up disk or trying to boot to the hard drive?

If you run fdisk does it see the hard drive and is a partition set as active? Boot to a start up disk, win95 or 98, and type fdisk at the command prompt, if it does not see the hard drive you'll see a "No fixed disks found" message at top. If it sees the drive you'll see a list of options. Option 4 is "View partition information". That one will tell you if a partition is set active and the size of the partition(s). One partition should be a Primary DOS Partition. If you get a screen before this asking if you want to use large disk support, say yes by pressing [Enter]. If you only look at the partition info you won't change anything and can use [Esc] to exit fdisk without changing the present setup.

Does BIOS see the drive? Use whatever key or combination to get into BIOS, check the hard drive parameters. I usually set them to autodetect.

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[AwARe]

Pete Burke,

A little better explaination of what I stated above.

If after doing all these things, checking the bios, running fdisk, and formatting etc etc etc........

If you know for "certain" that the HDD is installed correctly, and also formatted correctly............

If you are trying to boot your computer with a Win98 floppy that creates a virtual drive during the boot sequence..........

I have found that on some systems there is some type of incompatibly, either with the creation of the virtual drive, or posibly the cd rom driver on the Win98 floppy.....(May also be for some other reason entirely)

In the cases I have just discribed, a known properly formatted and installed HDD will disappear (so to speak) after booting with that 98 disk

I have found that by using an older boot disk, from Win95b for instance, that "doesnt" create the virtual drive, this problem can be avoided....

Hope that answers the question, and is a bit clearer as to what it is Im trying to explain...............

Good Luck!

[tjaymadison]

Sounds to me like there is an Autoexec.bat file on the hard drive.
It is creating a ramdisk as C: and moving the HD to D:

Boot from disk in A:
At the prompt, type DIR A: /W
Press Enter
Is one of the files listed AUTOEXEC.BAT?
If yes, write down its date and its size (bytes)

At the prompt, type DIR C: /W
Press Enter
Is one of the files listed AUTOEXEC.BAT?
If yes, write down its date and its size (bytes)

At the prompt, type DIR D: /W
Press Enter
Is one of the files listed AUTOEXEC.BAT?
If yes, write down its date and its size (bytes)

Are any of the dates and the sizes the same?



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"I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage, mathematician, computer pioneer, analytical engine designer (1791-1871)
-- (Question: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?')