question for Mark

[winston]

Mark
A friend has a computer that quit working. It will not boot, says there is no c drive. I suspect she got a virus as she downloads all these jokes with pics. I put in a startup disk and in dos tried to "find" the hard drive but with no luck. Any suggestions or should I just shoot it and tell her to buy a new computer? I am not sure it is worth installing a new hard drive. thanks Winston

[Mark Ardito]

Winston,

What Operating System is it running? How much RAM? Pentium I, II, III???

When you boot from the boot disk it goes to the a:\ prompt. What happens when you type c:

It still says "can't find drive"?

Can you go into the BIOS and see if the BIOS can see the drive. Make sure it is on 'Auto Detect'. To get into the BIOS it is either the "del" key or some machines have F1 or F2 or F11 or F12, it should say on your screen right after or before the POST beep.

Mark



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Sho~Bud Pro I, Fender D-8 (C6&E13) http://www.darkmagneto.com

[Lem Smith]

Another thing it could be is that the HD controller has gone bad...if so, you'll most likely not see it in the bios setup info. If it has a secondary IDE controller on the motherboard, and it's not already being used for a CD, etc... you could switch that and then change it in the bios if it is bad.

As to whether or not to get rid of it and get another one, it would depend on what kind it was...ie, pentium I, II, etc... If it was a new enough computer it would be worth pursuing finding a fix for it.

Lem

[winston]

Mark and Lem, thank for the assistance. I found out the hard drive went bad. Installed another one and computer is running. Thanks for the help. Winston

[Mark Ardito]

Winston,

Glad to hear it!

Good Luck,

Mark



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Sho~Bud Pro I, Fender D-8 (C6&E13) http://www.darkmagneto.com