Thank you AlaricD & Rapmaster.
Today I did replace the battery, and at the suggestion of the Tech Help I talked to at the store I bought it from, I left the battery our for more than 2 hours before I put the new one in. That did reset the BIOS ( he said to the factory condition).
I asked about bringing my hard drive in to have it tested, and he said it would take about 2 hours at 60 bucks per hour.
I don't think so.......
He also suggested that I try disconnecting all drives, unplugging everything, blow it out with compressed air, and starting the computer with all drives disconnected, then turn it off and re-connect the drives.
When I did that and started the computer again with all drives connected, I got a message saying "hard drive needs to be partitioned before it can be used. Do you want to create partition now? Y/N". I pushed Y and enter. That took me straight to FDISK, and it was the usual FDISK Menu selection. I did answer yes to "enable large disk support" and right now it says "verifying drive integrity" I'm not sure how long that takes, but I'll let you know what happens next.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Thank you, Nix
If this verifying actually works, I will keep it as simple as possible so I can try the next step before you guys get tired of messing with my junk and quit giving this excellent help. That way if I run into another problem maybe I won't have to try to muddle through alone. (muddle being the key word).
"Verifying integrity" ran for more than 6 hours, and at the end of that time I got the same old tired message.."invalid media type reading drive C (abort, retry, fail?)
The only change I can see at all is that my C drive is being recognized but still has no operating system.
Using the boot disk you used, restart and check what partitions are there (Option 4). Delete all partitions.
Now obtain a DOS 6.x boot disk (from BOOTDISK.COM) and boot with that disk.
Use the FDISK to create a primary partition (up to 2.1gb). This FDISK should not have the verify function so hopefully it will complete in a short time.
Restart and format that partition. Now test it with Scandisk or the like.
If the drive checks out, try the 98 boot disk and delete the partitions and try again.
You might try to download a diagnostic program from Western Digital and see how the drive checks out. The DLGDIAG10 may work for your drive, although it says drives starting with "WD".
You might try removing the CMOS Battery. I had one where the battery sucked the power when the computer was on (old Packard Bell). When I removed it, it works fine. I just have to enter the setting when I power off the computer. Since you seemed to have lost settings in the BIOS, this could be a factor.
Without testing the drive in another computer or testing another known good drive in the NEC, it is difficult to determine which is a fault.
------------------
My
Two Cents
Dennis
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Thank you Nix & AlaricD,
I just can't seem to get beyond that "invalid media type reading drive C". It has consistantly shown up in every single thing I've tried to do. I have located a new C drive. It is being Fed Exd and should be here in 3 days. If I still get "invalid media" after replacing the C Drive, maybe I'll just give it the old float test in the river.
It will take a few days to check this out, but I will let you know if it works.
In the meantime, to all of you who have tried to help me with this, I offer a heartfelt thank you.
From another site, the second point stood out to me:
"Invalid media type reading drive x" usually indicates a FAT error, NOT a dead drive and definately not a BIOS/IDE controller issue.
The most common causes of this error are:
1. You havn't formatted the drive yet. I am guessing this is what is going on, since you said "I have already partitioned it.", yet you made no mention of formatting the drive. They are separate acts. Use fdisk to partition, use format.com to format.
2. FAT32 vs FAT16 conflict. If the drive is formatted with FAT32 (using a boot disk for Windows 95 OSR2 or later), and you try to access the disk with an older boot disk, you will get this error. Either reformat using FAT16, or get a newer boot disk.
Also you might want to try GDISK.EXE which a utility from Norton, especially GDISK 1 /DISKWIPE which will wipe clean your hard drive.
Thank you, Nix,
I had tried to format using format.com and got a message saying format not supported. I downloaded the gdisk.zip attachment you provided and read everything I could get from the support documents you included. With my limited knowledge of DOS commands it took me awhile to figure it out, but tonight my computer is working great. Wiping the hard drive allowed me to use the original installation disks that came with my computer, and all the features seem to be working the same way they did when it was new. I had never used any of the "Ghost " features before, and it's great.
I never really thought the hard drive was dead and thanks to you I was able to prove it was not.
Thank you so much.
GDISK is just a HD utility that comes with Norton's Ghost.
I just new that it had the capability to wipe a drive totaly clean.
Sorry I didn't think to tell you how to use it via DOS.
Anyway congratulations are due on a number of fronts:
1. For your persistence.
2. For doing the background reading on GDISK and working out how to use it.
3. For successfully reinstalling Windows on your HD.
I'm sure you will have learnt from this experience and can, justifyably, feel proud of your acheivments.
Now all you have to do is find out what those kids did.
Tell them it cost you big $$ to get your system fixed.
Last edited by Nix; October 23rd, 2002 at 01:21 AM.
The accolades go to you, Nix, and all the other people who helped me solve this problem.
I did learn a lot, the main thing being that I need to go to school to learn more about my computer and how to deal with the problems it can bring.
I learned that people are wonderful about sharing the information they have,and that there are wonderful websites (like this one) who can put me in touch with people who can-and will - take the time to help out a stranger.
Each feedback gave me the chance to check out one aspect of the problem and eliminate it so that we could actually resolve it.
I've printed out every reply, and no doubt will be referring to them in the future.
Without going through that list of " fixes" I doubt if I could have ever done it.
My heartfelt thanks to Nix, AlaricD,Eeyore,HondaNSX12, Rapmaster & ralph3124 for all the great help and time you put into solving my comptuer problem.
Most of all, thanks to VirtualDr Forums for bringing people together from all over the world to help me work on - and fix- this problem.
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