im new so forgive me.......

[ash_gkr]

hi there, i know im probably posting my question in the wrong part of the forum, but i have a question about a problem that no one i know can solve, i have a pretty old PC with a SLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW 233mhz processor, i know "haha" "hehe" but thats besides the problem, every 4 or 5 months, i turn on my PC & it says "non-system disk, replce the disk then press any key" & theres nothing i can do, i have to use my windows 98 startup disk & format the drive! people insult me saying "duhh theres a floppy in your a-drive" but im not that stupid, does anyone know what to do when this problem occurs, by the way im stupid so dont make it sound to complicated lol :D

[HAL9000]

There are a number of things that could be causing this. A poor power connection preventing the drive from spinning up, I've even seen "stuck" drives where they don't spin up right away. The strangest occurance that I have come across was one machine in a small room with 3 others doing that and it turned out to be a high level of natural electro magnetic radiation in the area, moving the computer from the floor to on top of the desk solved the problem.

Is formatting your only solution? When you boot from a boot disk, can you see your drive, can you see any files?

I'm gonna move this to the Win98 forum.

[pstj]

Hi ash_gkr,

First of all, nobody's stupid... except maybe, and I say MAYBE... me :D . Second, are you sure it's not a floppy? :D just joking... I know what you mean. It can be quite frustrating...

So, every 4-5 months or so, the computer says that there is a non-system disk. Just like that, completely out of the blue? You didn't play in the Bios or anything? Maybe it's a virus. Maybe it's your hardrive going south, although that would be surprising since it only gives you that message at a 4 months interval. Give a bit more details, please... Or maybe another PCMecher will find the problem...

oops... I hadn't see that Hal had already answered...

good luck!

pstj

[LawyerRon]

Sounds like it could be a hard drive problem, ie., the hard drive is developing bad sectors while it slowly goes south. Run Scandisk and see what it reports. It will look for bad sectors. Scandisk will mark off any bad sectors so data cannot be written to them. Try that first and report back with the results.

[pstj]

LawyerRon,

A hardrive can be going south this slow? I mean, if it only does the thing every 5 months, it'll take a long time for the drive to fail, no?

pstj

[HAL9000]

Sure it could be, a friend of mine has a drive that spits out an occasional bad sector every couple months. It's been doing that for over a year and has about 80Mb in bad sectors. He says that he isn't gonna buy a new one until this one dies for good.

[pstj]

ok, good to know... thanks Hal!

[ash_gkr]

thanks guys, im shocked that i got so many replys so quick, i appreciate it, the problem may of been triggered from red alert 2, as i said my PC has the lowest specs ,32mb ram aswell, C&C red alert 2 required, 266mhz processor & 64mb ram, mine has 233mhz processor & 32mb ram :( do you think that could of caused the feck up? & yes, i put in the boot disk & could see all the files but im not a PC expert, i just have an average knowledge of them, i dont know what to do from that, alot of PC experts i know said they have heard this of this problem before & they dont know what to do! WAIT!!! i remember! i forgot to take out that floppy disk or even look to see if one is in there! DO'H! (joking)

[HAL9000]

If you can see that everything is intact, you just need the SYS.COM file on a bootable floppy. Type in SYS C: and it will transfer the system files to your hard drive. Hopefully nothing else was lost in the process so you don't have to go through a lenghty reload process.

[ash_gkr]

thanks mate, thats really helpful, if it happens again ill be sure to ask you for direct help from another PC, can i have your e-mail address just incase? ive heard about doing that, it can all be done from the boot disk? i have another couple of questions, ive picked up 2 PC's from work, they are EXACTLY the same model as my prsent PC with exactly the same specs but theres one problem, neither of them contain a CD-rom drive, a modem, a sound card, or any USB ports, what would be the best step to take? i also dont have a monitor/keyboard/mouse/leads for them, but i can use my presnt ones in the meantime, how could i go about getting 1 of them online & everything without spending to much, also i dont know how to wire CD-rom drives up ect, i know the cards are just simply plugged in & then drivers are installed, how would you go about it?

[HAL9000]

E-mail is hal9000@pcmech.com

If the machines are identical, I would get a copy of GHOST and slave the drive from the new machines to your machine, then use GHOST to mirror the drive over. When you put it back in, you will have an identical copy.

[Blakhart]

When I "service" a computer I remove all the boards from the motherboard and vacuum everything out, and I mean everything. Both sides of the boards and the psu and everything that can be vacuumed gets vacuumed.
Then apply a electronics contact cleaner like Deoxit, wich is my fav, on all the card contacts and mem and, well everything. Use a Que-tip. Hold all circuit cards by their edges please.
Then when dry, reassemble and maybe even apply new ide cables too.
This regimen seems to work miracles on occassion. And costs nothing, really.
On reassembly, make sure that you place no pci cards in the slot just under the agp slot, reason being that it will end up sharing the irq of the agp card.
I like to put the modem/nic card in the second slot down from the agp and then skip a pci slot or two for the sound card's slot.
This all being fine and well when there arent any irq conflicts after reassembly.
Hope this provokes thought.


PS
You may try selling all three comps you have now and purchasing a more recently made model with the proceeds.