can't boot from hard drive

[mikemnf]

Can boot from floppy or from cd rom, formatted hard drive reinstalled W98, won't boot from hard drive???? What command do you type at the DOS prompt to start W98?

Aptiva PII 350, 10 gb hard drive, original from IBM. System had been modified over the years, then not used for about a year. Now being re-assembled for my grandson with all the original components, or ad ons that worked fine when it was new.

Mike

[ComputerNut]

you may need to go into your bios to see if your computer is even trying to boot from the hard drive. usually i like the boot sequence to be as follows (assuming these parts are on the computer):

1. Floppy drive
2. Hard Drive
3. CD-ROM Drive

[mikemnf]

I have set up the boot as follows, 1) hard drive, 2) floppy drive, 3) cd rom. I have taken the hard drive over to my own computer and have discovered it boots fine on my computer. Must be a problem within the bios???? What now???

[GaryRouth]

What did you use when you reinstalled Win98? A full Win98 installation Cd, or an Aptiva Recovery Disk?

For a try at a quick fix, try this: press F1 to enter your Bios Setup screens again, and be sure that the section for the IDE hard drive is set to "AUTO". Then watch during boot to see if your hard drive is being detected correctly, or at all.

Recheck your jumpers and cables while you're at it.

If this doesn't do it, post again with your results & we'll take it from there.
. . . Gary

[p.s. ...since you booted from that hard drive on another PC in the meantime, you might want to boot into Safe Mode and run the "Enum Trick" to let your Aptiva re-detect the correct hardware. Here's the link in Tips&Tricks http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9254]