FDISK Doesn't Recognize Drive

[JFD]

Howdy,

A friend's computer died recently and she asked me to take a look. It's an older PC running Windows 98 SE. Basically, she turned it on one day and just got a disk error.

I brought over a Windows 98 Boot Disk and the computer booted up properly with that. I then thought I'd check the hard drive with the FDISK utility (she had nothing on the drive that wasn't already backed up). FDISK said that there was no hard drive installed, so I thought the problem was with the hard drive.

I brought over another hard drive which I know works, and installed it as the master (and only) hard drive. I double checked all the connections, then I booted up with the Win 98 Boot Disk again. Once I got to FDISK, I was once again told that there was no hard drive installed.

So my question now is - where do I go from here? What could be causing the hard drive to be not seen by FDISK? One person I know suggested downloading the updated BIOS from the motherboard's web site - but I can't get anything to work on this machine as it doesn't recognize the hard drive.

Any ideas?

Thanks very much!

John

[JoeP517]

Since you've tried a known good drive, I'd suggest that it is a motherboard or disk contoller problem. Can you access her drive on your PC if you jumper it as a slave? You should be able to d/l any BIOS updates on your PC, copy to floppy, and install from a DOS boot.

Joe

[bill_bright]

I would look in the BIOS and see if the drive is seen in there correctly. Also, on older boards, the BIOS does not automatically update, you have to Save & Exit, then reboot for new hard ware to be properly recognized from then on.

I agree with Joe that this sound like a BIOS or controller (motherboard) issue. Updating the BIOS is free - and that may very well fix the problem. If the controller is bad, there may be a second controller to try. Are there any optical drives? Do they work fine?

If the controller is bad, you can buy PCI controllers - but personally, if the controller is bad, since this is obviously an older board, I would start thinking about a new motherboard or PC.