computer hardware/BIOS error

Yeah, i can't boot off a CD, and the virus stuff isn't my main concern, I'd rather get into a DOS promt....or just get past the start up screens. k, I'm gonna go try to hook up the floppy again. :-)

Its possible that the hd started to format before it froze, and loost your boot information. Just try getting a boot up floppy and try that. If you don't have one, download something like loaf (linux on a floppy) and use that to reformat the machine before you try installing linux. It is highly unlikely that it has anything to do with your floppy drive.

Morpheo
the virus warning is due to your bioses antivirus checker is on
Go into your bios and deselect that option Now switch of the power and open the case
check that your IDE cable is seated properly chack that the ide cable is pluged in correctly
the red stripe on the cable must point to the power plug in your H/D
Now power up and enter your bios do a autodetect for the h/d if h/d is found you are almost ok;)
you can now boot with a dos disk 1 or any boot disk you have
do a f disk and check that parameters match your h/d
If ok do format/s

hope this helped

mike

k, the virus detection is off, im booting up C: then A:, and i still get the error message when I boot up, so very strange...I even get the message when the drive isn't hooked up and the BIOS doesn't think there is a floppy....curioser and curioser.

i was just looking at the IDE on the motherboard...and it looks as if a single pin is missing...its pin 29...is that the problem?

Nope, that's part of the IDE standard. Pin 29 is always missing.
Cheers,
cgkanchi

darn. Could it be the drive....i also noticed that either pin 3 or pin 30 is missing on the drive...is THIS the problem...or is that also standard on IDE?

There is a pin missing in the middle of one of two rows of pins on the HDD. It's so that your IDE cable gets connected the right way round.
You can tell if your HDD is working correctly by either noting the messages from the BIOS when you boot up, or if they vanish too quickly (which they usually do!), then try entering BIOS setup as you boot - depends on your BIOS what the key combination is to do this.From here you will have an option to check for HDDs - your HDD will be detected if it is physically connected correctly, even if it is an unformatted state, which I think it will be.
You will be able to do this regardless of whether on not you are using a bootable floppy.
If you want to make a bootable floopy from Windows (rather than downloading a *nix utility) then probably the easiest way to do this is to open a DOS prompt on a Windows session and type format a: /s, which will create a basic DOS bootable floppy.
If you boot from this, you should see an A: prompt, and C: will now tell you if it recognises your HDD. If you want to format the HDD from here you need to make sure that the file format.com is copied to your bootable floppy. It's normally stored in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.

It thinks those progs are viuses, its because they acces they acces teh disk or try to change the contents, which they do but not in a bad way.

Go into your BIOS and turn off vx scanning, i take it you either have award or pheonix bios, this option should kill your fake warnings

it wont have much to do wiht your drive desegnation, u should add anything u have and try format

linux diosnt have allot of viruses anyways you wont really need it, but if u like u can get a linux based one.

Preep

sry i missed a bit, or whatever u want to install, i took it you were trying to setup a router.

preep