[kaiserfunk]

my dad has a compaq armanda 3500 when you start it up it says the hard drive detects imminent failure. if i press f1 to bypass this and start it up i get dropped into the dos prompt menu.
if i use the comand prompt only option none of the normal commands are reconized....
only ones that work are time,verify,ver,vol and path all others give bad command or file name notice.

tried booting from disk but it gives disk read error, same for flopy.
any ideas other than replacing the hard drive

[SDFOX 7]

It sounds like you may have a SMART-equipped hard disk drive; since the technology was standardized in 1995, this is likely.

SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) hard disk drives are designed to warn of impending hard disk drive failure, the idea being in order to give the user enough time to transfer data to an alternate disk drive or media.

You may wish to transfer data and replace your hard disk drive.

[kaiserfunk]

thanks for the info