Stupid Computer Questions

[Guest Shingen]

OK, I'm not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination, so I got a question that's probably stupid to some, but I'll ask anyway..

I was installing an old DOS game on my PS2 486DX -66 off a floppy disk, when for some reason it changed the boot drive from C: (hard) to A: (floppy)

Is there any way to change it back so that it'll boot from my HD instead of the floppy boot-disk???

It's just a regular DOS - WIN 3.1 system. nothing fancy, just a glorified nintendo system that plays all the games my faster one doesn't.

If you need specs, I'll have to look at them, but it basically is running off DOS 6.2 and WIN 3.11

I just want it to boot from C:

Any way to do that??

Thanks

[ 05-15-2001: Message edited by: Shingen ]

[Epsilon 5]

Is your disk still in drive A: when you boot? If yes, remove it. Or it's because the computer asks for you to insert the disk in drive a?

[Parias]

Presuming Echelon's response didn't hold the answer, also check your BIOS settings.

[Guest Shingen]

quote:

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Is your disk still in drive A: when you boot? If yes, remove it. Or it's because the computer asks for you to insert the disk in drive a?

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OK, guys.. I'm not that stupid..

quote:

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Presuming Echelon's response didn't hold the answer, also check your BIOS settings.

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Well, when I run MSD.exe it says that the boot drive is A: I want to know which program/executable changes the boot drive parameters on a DOS system.

[Joel Schultz]

The BIOS doesn't care about the OS. When you start your PC, one of the very first messages you should get BEFORE the OS begins to load up is like "Press ESC (or F1 or DEL) to go to BIOS setup". Do that, and you'll be in a screen that allows you to configure your mobo setup. Boot sequencing (floppy, CD, HD, network) should be available somewhere. Consult your mobo manual, it'll have the details on what's going on. Or download the mobo manual from its manufacturer. Or just jump around the main BIOS menus till you find it...

CAUTION: unless you know what you're doing, tinkering with the BIOS has the potential to screw up your machine. I accidentally had my 850MHz Athlon overclocked to 1.3GHz for a minute or two, but caught the mistake before the CPU could fry...

[Guest Shingen]

ok, I tried that, but when I start my PS/2 IBM, there's no prompt for [esc], [f1], or [del].

The first thing it does is a KB count.

Then it accesses the floppy drive. It used to go ahead and then go to the hard-drive and boot off of it, but since last night, it won't read the HD on boot but insists on booting from A:

If I take the boot disk out of A:, it says:

non system disk or disk error

If I hit [esc], [f1], or [del] during start-up (before is does the KB count) nothing happens.

After the count it reads the A: drive then prompts starting MS-DOS

I can hit F8, but this just puts a pause between each autoexec.bat & config.sys commands. Hitting any other 'F-key' does nothing...

I can't figure out how to get to the BIOS!

[Parias]

Uh. Uh oh. From the sound of that, one might assume that your C: drive partition somehow vanished into thin air or something.

Anyways, assuming this isn't the case (for now), don't worry about any prompts that (don't) appear, just keep smacking the F1 and Del keys while the RAM counts up. Presuming your motherboard Doesn't Suck, it should take you into the BIOS.

Edit: Ooops. Take a note Radioactive Garden Gnome #331: Wake up and re-read the posts before trying to provide tech support!

Okay, so since hitting those keys I mentioned does nothing... ah... I'd go with my original theory then that your HD partition somehow got severely messed. I can't think of anything else at the moment..

[ 05-16-2001: Message edited by: Parias ]

[Guest Shingen]

ok, how do I change the Partition??

Do I need to get another HD?

[Parias]

Presuming that A) I'm actually somehow correct in my assessment (a first) that your partition is screwed, and you have nothing critical at all on that HD and don't mind dumping it and starting from scratch again, I'd advise popping in a bootable floppy and running FDisk. That'll tell you if you have any active partitions on your hard drive. If so, then I guess you suffered from dataloss... do a "Format C: /s" and start from scratch. If not, you'll need to make a partition then.

Been awhile since I've re-built an HD from scratch (a long while, actually) so someone correct me if I'm wrong here. And hell, without being able to get into the BIOS, I'm still not sure if it's just a simple case of an accidental re-direction or something... what game did you try to install precisely?

[ 05-16-2001: Message edited by: Parias ]

[Guest Shingen]

US version of Frontier: First Encounters v1.2

But it's not a boot disk in itself, just an install disk... I have no clue how my boot drive got changed.. but I can format the damn thing if I have to, and then reinstall everything...

but since it's only a 120 meg HD I'll probably replace it...

the whole system is an original 1991 configuration, except I added 16 meg memory..

[Guest Shingen]

ok this is what happened when I ran fdisk:

quote:

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Display Partition Information

Partition / Status / Type / Volume / Mbytes / system / usage

C:

1

/ A / PRI DOS / / 150 / FAT16 /100%

Total Disk space is 150 Mbytes (1 Mbyte=1048576 bytes)

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I re-started the system after running fdisk, but it still wants to boot off of A:, and it won't read c: for boot info...

the system still works after it boots from A:, there are no disk errors or files errors (scandisk) but I can't figure out why my boot drive was changed.

[ 05-16-2001: Message edited by: Shingen ]

[Joel Schultz]

About that BIOS entry: you want to hold in or pound those keys up until you know they failed (i.e. the "insert disk message" comes up).

But I wonder...could your system files have gotten knocked off of C: ?

What about this (um, can someone can back me up on this and confirm that Parias' radioactive garden gnomes aren't whispering disinformation in my ear? Thanks...) I assume your floppy drive is A: below.

1. Boot off of a floppy.

2. Somewhere on your C:, you should have file called sys.com. Find it.

3. Execute this command: SYS A: C:

4. Try to boot again.

What this is supposed to do: copy the system boot files off of the boot floppy and install them to the hard drive. If this solves the problem, then your problem was because your HD lost its system boot files. If it fails to solve the problem, we have something else going wrong here...

[Papi]

Hi Shingen, did you try "ins" key to enter bios setup. Remember to pres and hold the key when you start up.

Since I saw that you tried to install FFE, why don't you install win95/98 compatible JJFFE 2.1 version from here?

It has finally support for joystick too.

You can dl midi files of the music (sounds just great) from the same link too (old music won't work in this version).

[ 05-16-2001: Message edited by: Papi ]

[Guest Shingen]

quote:

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But I wonder...could your system files have gotten knocked off of C: ?

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Nope, that's not it, all the orginal system-files are still where they should be. That was the first thing I thought of.

quote:

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Hi Shingen, did you try "ins" key to enter bios setup. Remember to pres and hold the key when you start up.

Since I saw that you tried to install FFE, why don't you install win95/98 compatible JJFFE 2.1 version from here?

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I got JJFFE for my primary computer but my wife hogs it all the time, that's why I put FFE on my little one.

[Guest Shingen]

OK, I finally got into the BIOS and changed the startup sequence. I put the SCSI in slot one and the floppy in slot two, but when I re-booted and it accessed the HD it gave me that danm:

non-system disk or disk error

...message again, and I know it was trying to read the HD 'cause the little green light was blicking.

so I'm thinking that she's close to being toast. I mean, I've had this computer since '92, and it's been more reliable then any other system I've owned, but she's going on 10 years old, so I'll probably have to play her till she quits and then junk her..

*sigh* oh well, that's life...

thanks for the help guys

[Enderlin]

Okies if all your data is still on the Hard drive but, is still giving you the non-system boot error it might be that your System files got wacked somehow.

You can easily fix this by putting in your boot disk and typing.

sys c:

That will copy the boot disks system files onto the C Drive.

One thing to note though. You need to have a boot disk that was made with your operating system. So if you have win95/98 installed make sure you use a win95/98 boot disk.

Give that a shot and see if that works. =)

-Enderlin

[Joel Schultz]

I think at this point it's safe to eliminate the BIOS boot order from the question. You reordered it and nothing changed.

From what you say, your partition table is probably OK.

Are you SURE you have the correct uncorrupted system files? Because non-system disk error almost always means the system files are not present or possibly corrupt. See Enderlin's and my previous posts on the SYS command. (IIRC, for DOS there are at least three important files: COMMAND.COM, and two hidden/system files MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS that should be located in C:)

If things still don't work, have you tried this? FDISK /MBR

In the extremely rare event you wonk up your sector 0 of the HD (the master boot record), this will rewrite it with the startup code that looks for the system files to boot from. This somehow happened to me once, but the symptom on my machine simply scrolled "0101010101..." endlessly on the screen at boot time.

[ 05-16-2001: Message edited by: Joel Schultz ]

[Charles Lindsey]

Another brain dead idea before trying all that nasty rewrite stuff. Can't you let it boot to A: ; change the ms-dos prompt to c: ; and type WIN to try to get windows 3.11 to start?

Just an idea. The other guys will have to tell you the commmand. It's something like "cd c:"

[Guest Shingen]

no sence starting a new thread, so I'll use this old one...

got an old Compaq p200 Deskpro for $50...(old 233 died so I took out all the hardware and transfered to the p200)I use it as a glorified 'playstation' for all my old dos games that won't run on my new computer...( winXP)

here's the deal...

I've got a 1.6 gig HD on primary IDE

2.5 gig HD on secondary IDE plus CDROM drive...

I've still got another 2.2 gig HD, that i wanna use... is there anyway to hook it into my primary IDE and have two HDs off that port??

I tried it but it said "no fixed disk installed", so I unhooked it and she booted right up...

was just wondering.. no biggy if it ain't possible..

oh btw.. she's got 64 meg SDRAM, running on win98 if that matters any...

thanks in advance...

[ 05-03-2002, 10:49: Message edited by: Shingen ]

[Kartoffel]

two possibilities.

1- HD is bad.

2- Connection to the IDE bus cable was bad.

Of course you can stick it on primary IDE- assuming it has an open slot. You'll need to get the jumpers set so this one is primary/slave, tho.

EDIT: having a HD on the same IDE channel as a CD-ROM drive slows the HD read/write speeds down to that of the drive.

okay, 3 possibilities-

3- improperly configured.

[ 05-03-2002, 11:42: Message edited by: Kartoffel ]

[Guest Shingen]

quote:

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two possibilities.

1- HD is bad.

2- Connection to the IDE bus cable was bad.

EDIT: having a HD on the same IDE channel as a CD-ROM drive slows the HD read/write speeds down to that of the drive.

okay, 3 possibilities-

3- improperly configured.

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1. thought of that... 2.2 gig HD works on secondary IDE just fine...

2. thought of that... changed out IDE Bus cable..hooked up EACH HD to primary IDE to test (but just one each time) every one booted up great.. (used system files only [boot to command prompt])

3. that could be it... I did partition each drive correctly (20 meg part. each I think).. but I'll go back in the BIOS/FDISK and see if that's it...

as far as the secondary IDE with the CDROM... it hasn't slowed my read/write any... she runs BC3K just fine, as well as Homeworld AND Totalwar warlord edition!!

I was just wondering if it was POSSIBLE to have two HD's on the primary IDE... if it IS possible, then I'll figure it out..

thanks for the help, and any other suggestions are GREATLY appreciated!

EDIT

quote:

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Of course you can stick it on primary IDE- assuming it has an open slot. You'll need to get the jumpers set so this one is primary/slave, tho.

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duh! how'd I miss that one... that's prolly the problem.. (now I REALLY feel like an idiot!)

[ 05-03-2002, 11:55: Message edited by: Shingen ]

[Epsilon 5]

You checked you jumper settings? The primary IDE HDD might be set to single. It's usually written on the hard-drive how to set jumpers to single, master or slave. With drives on a same IDE cable, one need to be the master, ther other one the slave, or it won't work. If you did it but no change, try swapping the master/slave config between each HDD.

[Joel Schultz]

And if it ain't written up on a sticker on the drive or etched into the metal case, jumper positionings can be found in the manual, which can be downloaded from most HD manufacturer web sites if you don't have it.