Dont even know how to describe the problems...

[AndyT4097]

Hello, I have (had Win2K dual booted with FC5). Anyway, one day I turned on my pc and had no video, thought my on board went bad. Got a video card, didnt work. Decided to try the on board again, worked. Now it said there was a boot error at drive B. I didnt think I had a drive mapped to B. Anyway, I ran a DOS boot disk and did a fdisk and it said there were no fixed drives, so I figured that it was a bad HD, got a new HD, changed it, still a problem. I have to start out with the DOS disk then I can pop in a Win2K boot disk and tryed to install. Cant find the setup or install file on Boot Disk 1. Wont boot from CD to install 2K. I need help.

 

[SB305]

B: is usually a floppy drive. Any complications there in BIOS?
With the Win 2000 CD loaded (presumably in D: ), can you go from an a: prompt to D: then D:setup?

 

[AndyT4097]

No, It wont let me into the BIOS whatsoever. I hit F1 on the prompt and it flashes and then says drive B boot error. I tryed with the DOS boot disk and it says there is no driver for the CD drive.

 

[SB305]

Clear BIOS?
CMOS battery?

 

[AndyT4097]

I tryed to reset the jumper a few times, didnt do anything. I tryed it with the battery in and with it out.

 

[SB305]

Sorry, AndyT, unless the CMOS battery is dead, I'm as stumped as you are.

 

[Byteman]

Hi,

Seriously- I had the weirdest thing happen a few weeks ago....

I had been seeing a "No Operating System" error when starting up, quite a few times, I tried various things to see what would fix it...taking the RAM chips out and reseating them seemed to allow normal operation, when nothing else, not chkdsk, nothing...would help.

I figured I would be buying some new RAM modules pretty soon...

But, it happened once more before I got any, and in frustration, I just redid the whole computer to factory settings (I keep pretty good backups so nothing was sacrificed)---that did not help.

Now, I knew I had a hardware issue.... I poked around the internet and one result pointed to a bad IDE data cable so...I looked at mine, and sure enough, a few of the 80 wire IDE wires were nicked, and exposed the copper inside... Seems that, when I reseated the RAM chips, it moved the data cable just enough to connect the broken wires, so things appeared to work after messing with the RAM! I replaced the cable and have not had any problems since. Just goes to show you how the least little thing, something that would normally not be expected to fail, can stop you.

I work with a lot of broken, often donated, computers, and am always changing drives, so I suspect one of them had a bad cable, or I nicked it somehow. This particular machine was a find> it had taken a bad fall and went through a big window and laid around on a porch for months, I fixed it up and am typing on it now.

I've also seen some XP computers, notebooks and towers, that will not start up at all,, with a bad CDROM drive in them!

Check the cables carefully, all up and down, front and back...the hard drive's and the CD drives... replace one, try to boot, replace the other, try to boot... Remember, if you have the very fine wired 80 wire cable, you need one like that. CD drives normally just use any old IDE ribbon cable.

This really sounds like a CD drive failure, do you by any chance, have any others, could you find a good working CD drive and install it- ((Of course, to test you want to disconnect the CD drive you have in there now)) to try and boot up?

You can try booting to the same Windows hard drive, if nothing was formatted it might still boot. Sometimes, things with the boot files or Master boot record get corrupted so don't expect miracles.

Worst come to worst> You have a new hard drive, and your old hard drive, so maybe you can rescue any files back from the old one after you are running again.


There are lots of things other than this to cause similar problems, I don't guarantee it's the CD drive but it sure sounds so.

 

[icemanx]

Byteman I also work with donated computers (tadwa.org.au)
its all free where I work (non-paid lol) but I see this happening all the time

 

[AndyT4097]

Well, I always have access to any kind of PC part because of school, but not for a few weeks. Anyway, Im not sure if its a CD drive, I used a DOS boot disk and got to A prompt and finally found out how to get to C prompt and navigated my way throught the Win2K cd and found setup, it said this file could not be run in MS-DOS mode I WAS PISSED!!! lol Once again, I replaced the HD and dont know what else to do. If it read the CD it cant be a bad CD drive right?

 

[SB305]

Follow Byteman's suggestions.
These things are weird: I just tried to be clever and run 98SE on 1.5GB of RAM. It said it didn't have enough memory to initialize Windows! Then some very interesting things happened. Finally fixed it by replacing the PSU.

 

[Byteman]

Hi, Even if you cannot start setup by booting from the CD, you should be able to by booting with the floppy diskettes

If you cannot change to the CD drive letter at the command prompt,
and start setup, then something is wrong either with the drive or the CD. Wash the CD in plain very warm tap water and pat dry carefully with a cloth towel, not paper.

You should have the CD in the tray when you shut down....then, start the computer and see if setup starts by itself.

If not, try with the setup floppy diskettes and CD in tray...

follow the steps at the places below as a guide:

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win2000/cleanwin2k.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304868

 

[AndyT4097]

I tryed the Win2K boot disks and it asks for a user password and I hit enter and it starts to do something and then stops at a grey screen. Im bringing it into school Monday to get some assitance from my shop teacher and work on it.