HDD Controller Error

[Acid]

I have this 486 which had a bad HDD and that was causing it to slow down. I put this other one in and booted up in the starting it reads the floopy and says HDD Controller Error then i press F1 and inset a disk, (boot as much as i know it as. Then it says Starting Ms-dos and nothing happens. What files should be on the disk? and what should be written in the disk?

Thanks,

Acid

[Acid]

Thanks for the reply,
no i didnt fdisk and reformat it. How can i do this in BIOS? after I format it do i just put it a bootdisk that will take me to a:\? and how can i install my cd-rom to install windows? I am a newbie. THanks for the help

[mourikise]

Huh, did your BIOS detect your new HD? If BIOS doesn't "see" it then fdisk and format will not help at all.

[This message has been edited by mourikise (edited 08-30-2000).]

[Acid]

Nope it doesn't detect it i have the old version. I got the information of the drive but it says missing operating system. No I idnt get a disk with Windows. I dont know what OS it has but it seams to be missing.
Thanks once again.

[spark25]

The OS(operating system-Windows) was on the hard drive you took out,it sounds like. The hard drive you put in,did the person who sold,gave it to you,did they say it had windows on it? New hard drives have nothing on them,you have to buy Windows. It comes on a CD.Or older versions came on many floppy disks.
Now, from the top,do you have a copy of windows on CD or floppys?

[mourikise]

Hi,

I think maybe we are missing something here. Acid, first you have to ensure that the BIOS detects the hard disk. This has to be done before your PC boots the OS (DOS or Windows). To check if this is OK, right after the memory check the screen clears and it seeks the floppy to load the OS. Exactly that moment quickly press the "Pause" key. You must see a table where there is info about your system, eg. memory, floppies and also hard disks. If your hard disk is not listed there then BIOS hasn't detected it and so there is no point trying with fdisk and format. In this case reboot, enter the BIOS Setup and declare your hard disk to BIOS.

In the case the hard disk is indeed listed, then you should be able to partition it using fdisk.

So, please tell us wether or not the BIOS detects your hard disk. This will greatly help.

[atari2000x]

First of all: check on your floppy disk to see if it has the standard boot files(autoexec.bat,,command.com,,config.sys,,etc.. )...then check if it has the FDISK and FORMAT files...u wanna make sure u can boot up first... then go check if ur BIOS can see ur hard drive...
i used a 286,386,486 before...would be easier if u upgraded...

[Acid]

Ok from the top. I got the drive from a person who claimed it had windows. Yes i have Windows on CD. I have decleared the HDD to BIOS because it had the perimiters on the drive and when it boots up it goes finishes memory check and it beeps and says Missing Operating System. And in the table it says HDD type: 47. So should i go into BIOS and format it. Ya i could upgrade but i dont want to I just had it laying around for a while so i though I would do somthing with it. Thanks for all the help. And i hope the information i gave you will help

[DuhWhat]

Yep... from the bottom.. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif... follow what Atari said about a boot floppy. Once you have a disk that has all the stuff he says you need, go into the bios and make sure that it boots first from the floppy then the hard drive. Once you get the computer to boot up with the floppy, run the fdisk and format commands from the floppy.

Unless the drive is more than 1GB or so, you probably don't even need to fdisk the thing. It's probably already all one partition. You can try just formatting it if you want. Your other option is to get a boot floppy that has the drivers for your CD-ROM. Then using the Windows 95 or 98 CD-ROM you can run the setup program. Windows should detect that the hard drive is not correctly formatted and let you format it.

Good luck.

[spark25]

You can go to www.Bootdisk.com (http://www.Bootdisk.com) and get a windows98 boot disk file and put it on a formatted floppy disk,or your windows CD would format the disk as it installs,if you choose that option.
The boot disk will have DOS and fdisk,format programs on it along with CDROM DOS drivers.You don't format from the bios,it is done best from the boot disk ,in DOS-at the A:\,you would type "format C:/s",without quotes.If there was windows on the disk(which I doubt)before you format,it won't be there after you format,as format erases the files and structures the disk.Then you have to install windows from your cd.
That was from the middle,as we already took it from the top.Your bios sees your hard disk,does it see your CDROM?

[This message has been edited by spark25 (edited 09-01-2000).]

[DuhWhat]

Just as a little warning...it may not see the CD-ROM. I have a few 486 machines that didn't see the CD-ROM in the bios. No idea why, but it didn't make a difference as long as the IDE channel was left to Auto and I loaded the device drivers for the CD-ROM. I'm not really sure how that works, but I know I had at least a couple 486 machines like that.

[Acid]

Thanks guys and gals. For all the help I'll report back after I try the boot disk I just got.
Thanks