hard disk not ready??????

[mstyles55]

I have a 486 running dos 6.2 + windows 3.11 i recently switched on machine after it working fine the day before to have message displayed dirve not ready please insert boot disk.
I insert boot disk but cannot get any access to by C: hard drive. I have restored the defaults in the BIOS what can it DO?

please please help

[FlyingPig]

when you say you re-set the bios defaults, are the hard drive settings there ?. If so have you checked cables etc..

[itsmeok]

Here's a new one that I have not been able to get an answer to: I have built a system, set my BIOS in accordance to the manual, set my active primary drive in "fdisk" but when I try to format, it gets to 4% and I get a message that states "Not Ready, Format Terminated" Can you give me any ideas as to what that means and why I cannot format the drive? I have tried everything that I can think of....

[Igor M]

To Itsmeok

I think it can occur if your hard drive has bad blocks in the system area. In that case drive could be unusable... But if you have onboard IDE controller try to lower PIO mode for your hard drive in CMOS. (By default it's set to Auto. Change it to 3, 2, 1, or even zero.) In some rare cases drive refuse to work with high PIO mode value.


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Good luck, Igor M

[leeo]

To Mstyles55,
It sounds like your CMOS battery was dead when it would not boot to the hard drive. Or your boot sector went bad.Are you sure the boot disk you used has the same SYS and COMMAND.COM files as the hard drive. If different files, you could not access your hard drive either.If your battery was bad, change it, and set your hard drive settings in CMOS, then have it boot to the hard drive.
If your boot sector is bad, sounds like a new hard drive. Good luck.