Win 98 weird

[ROYP123]

I am using a Maxtor 80 gig 8MB cache that is about 4 months old on A7n266-VM that is about a year old.. Win98.2 Had a prob with the registry and booted funny off and on. Use NAV- no prob. Finally could not boot. At POST the HDD showed " ! Maytor !!!!! " Did fdisk-format-clean install of Win 98.2. loaded Asus drivers, and before I had the programs loaded .. 2 -3 boots.. same " ! Maytor !!!!! " So I ran PowerMax and did a thorough check..all okay. Did a low level format-fdisk -forgot to format and tried to load Win from cd rom. Message was " needs format- Windows can do that for you or you can exit and format. I let Windows format, and when 100% the message showed again that it needed formatted. This time I formatted and when 100% it said " format complete- unable to write BOOT-Format terminated..

I have no idea what it is. Ideas?

[mike breck]

Make sure the HD is jumpered properly.

Try a different cable.

Use PowerMax to zero wipe the HD in case you have a Boot Sector virus.

When you've wiped the drive then go into the BIOS and make sure the HD is detected properly. If it isn't, then set it to AUTO and see if it detects it.

If it's not detected, then try resetting the BIOS to defaults or flashing the BIOS (last resort).

If it's still not detected, then try the HD on IDE2, just in case IDE1 is faulty.

HTH

[ROYP123]

Thanks Mike. Jumpered to CS. I have been using the drive for several months. I wiped the drive yesterday with Power Max. It is detected in Bios. Everything looks normal with it.. except it can not write to the BOOT. Any idea how to fix the MBR ?

[Cricket]

Use a Win98 boot floppy disk and from the a: prompt, type "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotes)...that will rewrite the Master Boot Record.

MS Knowledge Base Article: FDISK /MBR Rewrites the Master Boot Record.

Cricket

[ROYP123]

Thanks Cricket. I was typing " fdisk/mbr " without the space between .

I am doing it now. That command erased the fdisk partition so I am fdisking -formatting again.
Perhaps that will do it. Hope so.
Thanks

[ROYP123]

It worked. It read the MBR and formatted. Now loading Win98.2 Don't know how the MBR messed up, but that apparently fixed it. Thanks Roy

[ROYP123]

Ho Hum..
loaded Windows..drivers.. and during the second or third reboots, same " Maxtor !!!!!. " Boot disk failure. Did Power Max again.. all okay. I guess I will replace the cable again and check all connections. Perhaps try the drive in another machine. Later

[ROYP123]

Well.. Mike, you were on the right track. Although I changed cables twice, as soon as I used a different power connector, it worked okay. I capped the old one so I won't use it again. It must have a short. Thanks

[mike breck]

Glad you got it sorted Roy.

Tell me, are any anti-virus options disabled in the BIOS? That also would affect writing to the MBR.

[ROYP123]

I keep the BIOS anti-virus disabled all the time. I never installed the pi ciillin (?) that comes with the boards. I just depend on Norton.
Do you install the picillin or at least enable the BIOS boot virus detection ?

[mike breck]

No, I tend to disable the BIOS anti-virus, and rely on NAV for keeping an eye on the MBR.