Virus or HDD Failure?

[lpc300]

Hi all,

Things always happen on Wednesdays...the one day that I'm out of the main office. Got a call late morning that the main computer wouldn't boot. The error message stated, 'Invalid Boot Disk'. Things had been working fine the night before (though someone was on the internet, opening emails, which is why I'm considering a virus). The computer is a Dell Dimension 733 (my company refuses to let me build one ). I think it's a 600mhz, 128RAM, 20 or 30 gig HDD. System is about 18 months old, and, although is used daily, has had little wear and tear...no lo level reformats or any reformats at all. Via the phone, I had a coworker get a Windows Startup Disk (We run Win98SE). Booting from that, just prior to the 'a prompt' the old 'C drive is not recognized' message comes up, just like it was a NTFS partition (which it is not). At the 'a prompt', I direct her to type 'fdisk'. The message ' No fixed disk found' comes up. I haven't seen it yet, but this doesn't sound good.

What do you all think? Virus? HDD failure? Was running an older version of NAV, but it hasn't been updated in a while (I remind people...). I'm bringing with me NAV 2003. Any other suuggestions? If the HDD is failing, any way of getting the data off of it? Professional is fine.

Thanks in advance.

[Force Flow]

Is the drive recognized in POST? Have you tried another IDE cable? Try running the manufacturer's diagnostic tools on it. You could also try slaving the drive to another computer.

If none of these work, chances are that the drive is bad.

[morriswindgate]

Boot with a startup floppy disk and at the prompt, type: C and press enter. If the
C:\> prompt comes up, type DIR and press enter. You should get a list of folder and
files on the drive. If so, then at the A: prompt type fdisk/mbr. You may have to
also type: SYS C That will copy system files to the hard drive to make it bootable.

You should get message that the files have been copied. Remove the disk and reboot.
FYI, the command "fdisk/mbr" will rewrite the master boot record.

[lpc300]

Thanks for the responses. First, since I haven't been on site, yet, I'm not sure if the drive is recognized by POST...BTW, how do I tell? As a last resort, I am planning on slaving it to my home machine, tomorrow night, if all else fails. Morris, when I was speaking to my coworker on the phone, she said that c: drive was being recognized as the ramdrive, so I didn't have her fdisk the mbr or perform a sys c: (though that was my first thought of what to do). If the HDD is not being recognized, could this work, anyway?

[glc]

"No fixed disk found" is a failed drive, cable, or controller - or a bios issue. If the drive is failed, data recovery has to be done in a lab, call Ontrack for options (very expensive but if your data is worth that much it works). Poke around in the bios, if the drive isn't seen and everything else looks kosher in there, try a cable. Try slaving it into another machine.

[mike breck]

I'm not sure if the drive is recognized by POST...BTW, how do I tell?

You should see the drive being listed, with all the other devices, in the hardware summary screen at the end of the POST. If you hit the Pause key at that point, it will halt the POST long enough for you to read it.

Hitting Enter will resume POST.

Another way to do is go into the CMOS setup by hitting the appropriate key (it should tell you on screen, which key) when the PC is booting. The set the channel containing the HD to Auto and see if it detects it properly.

You'll have to do that anyway, as the other members have suggested checking out the settings in the BIOS

[glc]

The problem with Dell, etc. is the POST screen is masked by the splash screen. You need to go into bios and disable "silent boot" or "show logo".

[Trophy1]

So what was the problem? I had the same error message. I tried three different cables but still the BIOS couldn't find any drive. Everything I tried the the drive couldn't be found. I took the drive from my second PC and installed it and the BIOS found it and XP was ready to to install the OS. So, I guess my problem was the drive got a electric shock or something that killed it.

[mike breck]

Could also just be the HD died.

Did you try running the manufacturer's diagnostic software on the HD e.g. Maxtor/PowerMax, WD/Lifeguard etc.