Invalid media type reading drive C

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While I had the cover off to check the label on the hard drive , as suggested by AlaricD

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No mention was made about what was on the label. Although the indications are that this is an OEM setup with the original hard drive, I have to wonder if the drive has been replaced with one that requires a Drive Overlay. The fact that the BIOS showed all drives set to None except for the CDROM is suspicious. If the battery were low or Reset to BIOS Defaults were selected, you would not have "Secondary IDE Master [CRD 8240B]" with no hard drive set on Primary Master. Something changed this.

If the computer needs an overlay program to use the hard drive, the computer could not Auto detect the drive without it. If the computer is booted from a Floppy disk without the overlay program being loaded, C drive would not be present.

Therefore, the drive size may be important. A virus designed to wipe the MBR could remove the Overlay Program (Ez-BIOS) rendering the drive inaccessible. This could be remedied simply by reinstalling the overlay program.

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Try moving the hard drive to IDE2 as master (disconnect the CD-ROM) first and see if bios detects the HD.

Also try the CD-ROM on IDE1 as master to see if it gets detected.

Could be that IDE1 controller has died ?

If HD is still not detected in above scanario, but CD-ROM is then your IDE controllers are ok.

Try a different connector cable from HD to IDE controller.

It's possible there is an overlay-- in which case one would need to set up the BIOS to view the drive as the largest drive the BIOS can accept, which is usually the instruction given by most overlay software. If the drive type is not set this way, the overlay installation may be unable to detect the drive (although some can scan for the hard drive regardless of the CMOS settings) and therefore be unable to install the overlay. It would depend on the overlay version.

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From the OnTrack FAQs
How do I overcome BIOS related difficulties using Disk Manager?

Answer
Incorrect BIOS settings can lead to installation problems. Sometimes seeing a drive size as smaller than full capacity, not seeing the drive at all, or being unable to install Disk Manager’s DDO can be a result of BIOS configuration. Ontrack Engineers try to develop software for all computer systems, but with the vast number of unique computer BIOS, there will be a few cases when it is not possible use a drive to full capacity beyond the BIOS limitations. One safe fallback procedure in these cases is to use the drive as the BIOS recognizes it (at the truncated value). There are several suggestions that can be implemented to provide a compatible BIOS environment for a new drive beyond the capabilities of your BIOS.

General process:
Try the following procedures. When running the latest versions of Disk Manager, if one BIOS setting doesn't work, try the next suggestion. If nothing works, call the support line after you have made attempts to proceed normally. Sometimes if there is a difficulty on one channel (Primary channel or Secondary channel) try the other. Do not try to add an IDE drive as Slave to a CDROM.

BIOS setting alternatives for a IDE/EIDE/Fast-ATA drive installation:

• 1. Set the BIOS to AUTO for the new drive. Often, this is the best first attempt. In many cases, if this succeeds, no Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) will be needed for full capacity. Note: A few systems require the BIOS drive detection feature to be manually initiated.
  2. Try to set the drive as USER instead of AUTO. Set the Mode to NORMAL (or disable LBA) and use 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. Disable PIO (or set it to 2), and disable 32 Bit Access. These function may be in Advanced BIOS Menu functions or Chipset, Plug and Play, or Peripheral settings.
  3. Try to set the drive to NOT INSTALLED. Even though the BIOS does not acknowledge the drive, Disk Manager may be able to install the drive to full capacity.

Some BIOS’ settings may not allow changing or user access without a special boot diskette (like the Compaq Diagnostic diskette), or may need special keystrokes at various points of the boot process. Before contacting the motherboard or computer system manufacturer for BIOS access procedures, try common keys such as DEL, F1, F2, F10, CTRL-ALT ESC, CTRL-ALT ENTER, CTRL-ALT T, CTRL-ALT S, CTRL-ALT SHIFT S. In a few cases, the motherboard manufacture has tried to automate the BIOS so no access is possible (or Auto-detect features cannot be disabled). So long as the drive to be installed does not exceed the BIOS limitation, this totally automated BIOS is a very good BIOS. It is very difficult, or sometimes impossible to work with when the drive exceeds a totally automated BIOS drive size limit. Again, a safe procedure when nothing else works is to use the drive as the BIOS recognizes it (at the truncated value). Another alternative to installation restraints is a new, intelligent IDE card instead of native BIOS for attaching the hard drive.

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Again, it depends on your particular overlay.

Perhaps as an experiment you can try following these two steps (mentioned in the article above but reprinted here for your convenience. We know their Step 1 isn't working.):

1. Try to set the drive as USER instead of AUTO. Set the Mode to NORMAL (or disable LBA) and use 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. Disable PIO (or set it to 2), and disable 32 Bit Access. These function may be in Advanced BIOS Menu functions or Chipset, Plug and Play, or Peripheral settings.
2. Try to set the drive to NOT INSTALLED. Even though the BIOS does not acknowledge the drive, Disk Manager may be able to install the drive to full capacity.

It's possible the first of these two steps will solve it for you (especially as the second step is recommended for initial installation of the overlay.)

Also check if there is somewhere else within you BIOS screens to disable / enable IDE controllers.

Someone may have disabled IDE1.

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Originally posted by Nix
Try moving the hard drive to IDE2 as master (disconnect the CD-ROM) first and see if bios detects the HD.

Also try the CD-ROM on IDE1 as master to see if it gets detected.

Could be that IDE1 controller has died ?

If HD is still not detected in above scanario, but CD-ROM is then your IDE controllers are ok.

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Good call on that-- dunno why I didn't think of that sooner! I'd suggested trying the HD in another computer, but should have thought about trying it on the controller that did seem to detect something...

Thank you AlaricD, Eeyore, ralph3124 and Nix.
That is a lot of information to process for one with my limited knowledge of how BIOS function and may take me all night long to process it, but I'll give it my best shot and get back to you sometime tomorrow with whatever results I get.
Thanks for the interest in this aggravating problem.

Great News! I may be getting somewhere with the generous help I'm getting.
To ralph3124: I'm sure the hard drive is ok, because at the A:> i typed DIR C: and got the list of files located on C. The battery seems to be ok, because in BIOS the time and date is changing correctly.
To Eeyore: The information I found when I checked the hard drive was 13328 cylinders, 15 heads, 63 sectors. If the drive has been replaced, it was done either at the factory or at Office Depot where I bought it in early 1998. I'm not sure yet exactly what a drive overlay is, but I will try and find out right away if i need to. I did run my Norton professional virus program, and no virus was detected. It had been updated very recently.
To Nix & AlaricD: When I disconnected the CD Rom , the hard drive still was not recognized, but when I changed the CD Rom over as master, the IDE1 controller was detected as master..after I enabled it in BIOS. Nix, you were right, it was disabled, but disabled is the default for that controller and that had to be changed and saved. After I changed it to enabled I did see the "Fixed Disk 0:WDC AC36400L as well as Secondary IDE Master [CRD 8240B] " when it was loading.
AlaricD, I used the information [From the OnTrack FAQs] that you sent to change the default setting in Master IDE from auto to User, disabled LBA and disabled PIO.
To HondaNSX12: After all these changes when I tried to FDISK I still could not get anything except the "Invalid media type reading drive C. abort?retry?fail?"

I finally abandoned both the windows 95 and windows 98 boot disks I had been using (both at all steps) and went back to the very first windows 95 bootdisk I made the day I bought this computer, and the version of windows 98 second edition upgrade that I have on it now. Something in all of that worked, and here I am looking at the FDISK Options Screen!!
Yee Haw!!
4 options
1. create DOS partition or logical DOS Drive
2. Set active partition
3. Delete partition or logical DOS Drive
4. Display partition information.
(I choose 4)
(new screen)
Display Partition Information
Partition Status Type Volume label Mbytes system usage
C: 1 A pri DOS (blank) 2047 unknown 100%
2 (blank) ext Dos (blank) 1537 (blank) 100%
Total disk space is 473 mbytes (1mbyte=1048576 bytes)

Will it work? I dunno..
Something looks wrong here, but what?

Maybe I'll just leave it where it is until I get some feedback from you guys.
Thank you all so much.

The drive C: you are getting listing of files on wouldn't be labeled "MS-RAMDRIVE", would it? It probably would. If you were using a Windows 95 or 98 Emergency Boot Disk, it creates a RAM drive using the first available drive letter. Since your hard drive does not contain a filesystem supported by your boot disks, the first available drive letter is C:. However, all this is hard to tell because I'm not sure if you moved the hard drive around before or after getting a list of files on C:.

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I used the information [From the OnTrack FAQs] that you sent to change the default setting in Master IDE from auto to User, disabled LBA and disabled PIO.

Display Partition Information
Partition Status Type Volume label Mbytes system usage
C: 1 A pri DOS (blank) 2047 unknown 100%
2 (blank) ext Dos (blank) 1537 (blank) 100%
Total disk space is 473 mbytes (1mbyte=1048576 bytes)

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Since you're not sure what an overlay is, maybe you didn't have one. And when you change the geometry settings for the drive, it can cause problems with FDISK showing the right partition information.

You may need to restore the system to the physical configuration it was before (put the hard drive back on Primary Master) and the same logical settings (set drive type to Auto), and then move in a more systematic fashion. By jumping around from controller to controller and setting to setting, it's harder to determine a cause-effect relationship.

One thing, though-- the bootdisk you made when you first got the computer *may* have overlay software on it, enabling the drive to be recognized. Again, it's hard to tell from here, especially considering how many changes were to the system configuration that made tracking the progress difficult.

Again, I would suggest hooking the hard drive back up as primary master, setting the type to Auto, and then booting off this Win95 boot disk that seems to work. After that, leave the physical settings the same and change the drive type to User with the 65535,15,63 settings again. If that fails, try 13328,15,63 (by my reckoning, the drive you have is about 6GB-- is this correct?)

Thank you AlaricD
Yes, the file listing on C: is labeled "MS-Ramdrive" , and yes the drive I have is 6.4GB.
I am making the changes you suggested and will try again.
Thank You

How much disk space do you think you have and how much does the DIR command say (at the end of searching, DIR will show you the hard drive label, the amount of folders and files, and the amount of hard disk space and free hard disk space).

The second line is the boot disk RAM drive, which is fine (don't try and delete it now! That won't work too well).

Seems like your hard drive is going back to normal. Can you boot up to your OS again or is it still giving you trouble? If you cannot, try taking out the hard disk and installing it on a computer with an operating system. Your BIOS should pick it up, and depending how you have the second computer set up (I'm assuming the other will have only 1 hard drive already and 1 CD-ROM and 1 floppy), the testing drive should be picked up and given the letter D: or E: (If your CD-ROM is set to IDE2 master and the master hard drive is set to IDE1 master).

If you can read the files of the hard disk under Windows, then it looks like your in good shape.

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Originally posted by sstnkyfeet the IDE1 controller was detected as master..after I enabled it in BIOS. Nix, you were right, it was disabled, but disabled is the default for that controller and that had to be changed and saved. After I changed it to enabled I did see the "Fixed Disk 0:WDC AC36400L as well as Secondary IDE Master [CRD 8240B] " when it was loading.[/B]

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I would be surprised that disabled is the default especially if the HD is attached to IDE1.

Anyway if you connect the HD back to the now enabed IDE1 as master, connect the CD-ROM back to IDE2 as master and then do the AUTO detect in BIOS, it should pick up the correct settings for both.

When done save the BIOS settings and reboot.

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Originally posted by HondaNSX12
How much disk space do you think you have and how much does the DIR command say (at the end of searching, DIR will show you the hard drive label, the amount of folders and files, and the amount of hard disk space and free hard disk space).

Seems like your hard drive is going back to normal.

If you can read the files of the hard disk under Windows, then it looks like your in good shape.

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Originally posted by sstnkyfeet
Yes, the file listing on C: is labeled "MS-Ramdrive"

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At the time of this reply, he is still unable to read from the hard drive, as evidenced by C: being the RAM drive created by his boot floppy. He IS able to get the BIOS to pick it acknowledge the hard drive, but has not yet said he can read from it.

Maybe your posting is more of a prophecy... :)

Thank you,
HondaNSX12.
I can't hook up this hard drive to my second computer. It is comparatively new, still under warranty, and opening the case voids the warranty.
AlaricD called it right about the DIR results. It was the MS-Ram Drive, so I doubt if that's much help.
Still getting the "no operating system" and "no fixed disks present" messages.

Nix,
I do have the HD connecetd to IDE1 as Primary master and CDRom to IDE2 as secondary master. Setting the BIOS to auto does not pick up the HD. I can change those settings as described in the earlier posting, and it does detect it. I can function with it like that as long as I do not turn off the computer. I can restart the computer by using ctl+alt+del and the settings hold. When I shut it completely down, it resets the BIOS for those items ( and others, but not all) back to default.

AlaricD,
You called it right again. I can get the "MS-Ramdrive" information up, but can't read it.

I spent this afternoon tracking down the 2 teenagers (age 13&14) who caused this whole problem with my computer. Here's what they said:
They had a new CD Rom game that would run really good on my new computer (windows XP) and would not run too good on the old one. The way they chose to resolve this was to fdisk and reformat so they could "free up some memory"
Here's what they say they did:
1. deleted the first line they saw (primary dos ?)
2. deleted the second line they saw (extended dos?)
3. created primary dos partition
4. created logical dos partition
5. turned off the computer and started it again so they could format it.
6. turned the computer back on.
7. got a whole screen full of lines all of which said no operating system found.
8. "then we just turned it off cause we didn't want to mess up your computer"
The next day they got the 3rd person involved (age 13) because "she messes with computers all the time and is really good with them"
She went through the computer stuff and found a cd to put windows back in. (that could have been anything, I have 2 windows 98cd's for new dell computers, one windows 95 for hp computers, one windows 95 for nec, one windows 98 upgrade, one windows 98 SE upgrade and one windows XP for new computers.)
Of course they did not mess with the BIOS, because "you can really mess up a computer that way"
They were "gonna tell me" but they had to leave too soon.

Here's the big question in my mind:
Is it time to take it to a repair shop, or is it down for the count?

So THAT'S what happened...

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7. got a whole screen full of lines all of which said no operating system found.
8. "then we just turned it off cause we didn't want to mess up your computer"

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Hmm, had the next person not messed around, it might have been easy to do the FDISK and format after booting from a boot disk. Apparently, they didn't realize that after deleting the partitions they wouldn't be able to boot from the hard drive, and would have needed a bootable floppy.

With the primary IDE enabled, and the system showing that you have the drive (being shown at boot), then you should be able to boot from the boot diskette and run FDISK. Now knowing the history, we know that

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Partition Status Type Volume label Mbytes system usage
C: 1 A pri DOS (blank) 2047 unknown 100%
2 (blank) ext Dos (blank) 1537 (blank) 100%
Total disk space is 473 mbytes (1mbyte=1048576 bytes)

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is probably a result of their botched FDISKing. You can fix that now, by destroying those partitions and rebuilding them, ensuring, of course, that you answer "Y" to "Enable Large Disk Support Y/N."

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Originally posted by sstnkyfeet
Thank you,
I do have the HD connecetd to IDE1 as Primary master and CDRom to IDE2 as secondary master. Setting the BIOS to auto does not pick up the HD. I can change those settings as described in the earlier posting, and it does detect it. I can function with it like that as long as I do not turn off the computer. I can restart the computer by using ctl+alt+del and the settings hold. When I shut it completely down, it resets the BIOS for those items ( and others, but not all) back to default.

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So you are able to fdisk it and format it as long as you don't power down? (I mean fdisk the hard drive, not the RAMdrive on the boot disk.) ??

If the BIOS won't retain the settings I'd suspect a problem with the battery inside.

But this wouldn't be caused by anything the kids were doing. Maybe you knocked it loose when you were fiddling with the IDE cables?

Either that or there is something in the BIOS that is making it want to autodetect on each cold boot. It shouldn't do this if you have manually punched in a "USER" setting for the drive but look around to make sure.