Kayak

I just get the message "Operating System not found" (to be precise) with no dos prompt. I can hear that the c drive does not boot up properly. I use NAV and keep it up to date with the auto facility. The m/c is subordinate to my main machine on my home network and does not have email. If it was a virus that would mean I should use the basic Rescue Boot Floppy Disk, right?

Put one of the Norton floppies in the drive and boot from it. You ought to get a DOS prompt and be able to see the files on the C: drive by typing DIR C: etc. in DOS. If you get the DOS prompt but can't see C: then your whole disk is dead. If you see C: then the next step is to run SCANDISK C:/SURFACE at the DOS prompt to run a full disk check. This depends on SCANDISK being on one of the floppies you have. Then you would write a new boot sector to the drive. The command for this is SYS C: at the DOS prompt, and again it depends on a file SYS.COM being present on one of the floppies you have.

I'm not familiar with Norton and it's probable that there are facilities on their rescue disks to deal with such situations, e.g. writing a new boot sector, scanning for bad sectors, and recovering data.

Kayak, thanks for the education, Im going to copy your posts into a txt file for the day when it happens to me. One question, would a windows boot disc help in the same situation (in a similar way to the Norton floppies)

Neil

Kayak - Thanks for your prompt replies. They are much appreciated.

No c drive was available. Following all the instructions on the rescue disk eventually led me to "Unable to access drive C:"

I assume from this that the C drive is no more, that it is an ex C drive, that it is bereft of life and only gave the impression of life because it is nailed to its computer case in the upright position .......

I am going to clock off and give myself a severe self criticism for putting myself in this position. Can it still be accessed in some way by a clever computer repair expert? Tomorrow I will do things like check internally that it is still plugged in etc.

Again, thanks for your help

Regards
Rob

Robb, little consolation at the moment but the best thing I ever did was install a 250m zip drive in one pc and spend a bit of time finding and configuring an application to copy all my data, favorites, emails, address and so on from the pcs on my network onto the zip disc. To backup everything I just have to click on a shortcut on my desktop, I do it every night and swap discs once a week.

good luck with your recovery.


Neil

robber - thanks for the tip. I will come back to that for the future - once I've double killed this hard disk in a really painful way - and then calmed down :-)

Robb, sorry to hear that. Assuming you have powered your PC off at some stage during all of that and the drive is not visible on power on, then you have a candidate for a future MP sketch. If the information on the drive is really critical there are data recovery specialists you can search for on the web, but that would not be cheap. As you say, it's worth checking that the data and power cables to the drive (and the other ends) are secure. I don't think that a computer repair shop would be able to do anything, but I guess that's also worth a try.

robber, if you have Windows 2000 or XP then there is a facility to create repair disks built in, and anti virus programs etc. also normally have them. Otherwise the boot disks won't be much use. What you can do is to format a floppy (make it bootable), and copy SCANDISK, SYS, FORMAT, and FDISK onto it from your \WINDOWS\COMMAND folder. That should give you most of the facilities.

Robb, it just occurred to me that there is something else worth checking, namely that the BIOS parameters for the drive are correct (things like cylinders, no. of tracks/sectors etc.) Go into the BIOS at boot. Unless you have documentation for the drive you won't know what they should be (although you will find a manual for it on the manufacturer's site on the web given the model number). However, there is normally an auto-detect option which gets the BIOS to find out the correct parameters.

Neil,

What application did you find that would copy your necessaries over? If you use Iomega's software it is severely limited in what you can do and I've been hoping to find a better alternative.

Thanks, Rob.

Robb - Pull it out and place it in a plastic bag and then into the freezer for three minutes or so than back into the machine and see what happens.
No, I'm not 'pulling your plonker' - twice I've used this trick and managed to get the data off of a failed unit. True, many times it hasn't worked but in desperate times!!!
The other track I'd take is, if that doesn't work, put it in your other machine as a second disk (in place of the CD probably) and on its own IDE ribbon cable to IDE2. The other machine may pick it up as a D: drive if your lucky and you can then transfer your data onto its drive.


Mr. Wonderfull - The fact that you've a dual processor stopped me answering. That opens up a whole can of worms with the programmes that try to use it. Normally though you should check that your RAM's OK (by substitution), that the video drivers etc are the latest and that it's not something like Kaza running in the background that's freezing it. You may also get a clue if you look in event viewer which may have entries coinciding with failure.
I'd be interested to hear of your experience if you do take it to PC world BTW.

Kayak - will faff around with it today and think about how important the lost data really is. Thanks for your help.

Leo1 - While its in the freezer I will also turn round three times, chuck loads of salt over my shoulder, spit and salute if I see a single magpie and generally hope really really hard. If it works I shall also say out load "Leo1 is an ace cool kid" 10 times :-) Thanks for your response.

Off to find a freezer bag .......

Regards
Rob

Seymour, Its a little ap called backup magic from http://www.moonsoftware.com


Being an idle and simple sod I particularly like this bit;

"Uses simple file copy, does not use any proprietary file formats so you can restore your data without Backup Magic, simply by copying files back to the source location"

Neil

Robb - Good luck - If none of the above work you could try a lightly tapping a corner of the disk on the edge of the desk. Sometimes the plates jam and don't spin up - this may free them. If, of course, you look at the electronic bits and see a hole burnt into an ic then none of the above will work ;-( In that case there are 'shops' that will recover most of your data (usually) but they're very expensive.

Neil, thanks. You're just like me ;-)

Noticed that my PC Plus magazine had a CD/DVD writing software free with it this month which includes a backup facility so might have a look at that. Will report back if it's any good.

For some reason my power lead has stopped powering my laptop. I have about 90 minutes remaining on battery. Is there anything I can do to keep the power going until I can get to shop tomorrow morning?

Thanks.

Mr.E, there's a switch on the wall socket.... :-)

:-) Managed to get another cable to fit, hasn't got a box thingy in between but its working all the same.

Not really a PC question:

My 6 pack isn't working properly..... I have a 6 CD changer in my car. It's now quite old, and won't read the discs very well. Is there anything I can do or is it a specialist job?

Seymour Clearly,

Is that two problems? The first, I would recomend joining a gym, they are quite good at getting 6 packs working :)

J.

I belong to a pretty good BB site, but they've got a problem with their internal email system that loses emails. Anyone got any good ideas I can pass on to them?