No Drive C when booting from a floppy

[TimBereman]

I am attempting to solve a problem with a Gateway PIII 500 MHz PC. To perform some diagnostics on Drive C, I have booted the machine from the floppy using a known good Windows 98 SE startup disk. When I boot with CD-ROM support I am advised Drive C could not be found due one of three reasons. Consequently, the RAMDrive gets mounted as Drive C. I can boot directly to Drive C and load Windows successfully. Is there a chance that something with the FAT32 partition so messed up that Drive C disappears when booting from a FAT32 Win98 SE startup disk?

[mhta_!]

can i know what os you are using?

[CMonster]

What are the "three reasons" that drive C cannot be found?

[jray]

maybe using a disk overlay...

[fabbers]

There is a possibility that your hard drive is running on a UDMA66/100 ide controller as opposed to a standard one and these sometimes require you to have a seperate driver loading on a dos startup disk in much the same way as a cd rom driver.
Check in device manager to see if you have any SCSI controllers listed or additional IDE controller as you may need specific driver from the board manufacturer.

[welsh wizard]

Question ?
Does your BIOS see the drive and identify it correctly?

WW


[This message has been edited by welsh wizard (edited 05-10-2001).]

[Chunky]

I suspect it's either the Dynamic Drive Overlay, or possibly a mismatch, or lack of, Drive Compression drivers.
(well, these are the the two which jump to mind immediately)

Chunks...
(http://www.rygar.co.uk)