computer hardware/BIOS error

I have an old PC running on a 486, not sure about RAM or anything else. I recently dug it out of the attic and thought that i would wipe the hard drive (407 mB) and install Red Hat Linux 7.2. I formatted the C: drive, and it then gave me a message saying "Warning, possilbe virus detection, continue?" i said "yes" and it the asked me to name the drive, if i remember correctly. My computer then froze, and I had to reboot. When it was starting up, it gave me a "non-system disk error" because I had left a floppy in the drive. I took it out, but it still gave me the error. So i rebooted a couple of times but the same thing happened. At this point, I was annoyed, so i took the box apart, and removed the floppy. Then I changed the BIOS so that it didn't think there were any floppy drives, though there was still a CD drive now plugged in the cable that had been attached to the 3 1/2 floppy.....any suggestions as to a way i can fix this, because it's still giving me the error.

WHAT IS THE DRIVE ORDER? A,C,D?

HOW WAS THE CD ROM HOOKED ON THE SAME CABLE AS THE FLOPPY? THe A: Drive is Not hooked up to the IDE

Where did the error message come from?
If it came from the BIOS, then this is a fairly 'normal' message and will happen if you have 'virus detection' turned on the BIOS. The message is issued if you try to write data to the boot sector of your HDD. Shouldn't cause your PC to freeze though!
Not likely to be a problem with your floppy drive - I suspect your HDD is now in a rather dodgy state, which is why you are getting the non system disk error.
One option is to reconnect the floppy drive, and boot from a basic system disk, and try the format again. Doesn't really matter what type of system disk you use - one created under Windows will be fine for this.
Alternatively, if the CD you have allows you to boot from it, then you can see if that works. You will need to alter your BIOS settings to get it to boot from the CD, rather than the HDD. f

turn off u r virus scanner and try it again the reason u r getting the error message is because ur trying 2 write 2 the hard drive
and the virus scanner thinks its virii trying 2 write 2 u r hard drive

As BlazeTech said, the floppy connection and the HDD/CD connection are completely different.
You will see two different types of cable coming from the motherboard - one of them will connect to your floppy, and the other (the IDE one) will be connected to your HDD and the CD.

Did you format, then restart without installing Linux. if so this just means there is no OS on yur machine and that you need a boot disk to start installing an OS

Go into your BIOS and double check that your CD Drive is your first boot device (if your BIOS will even allow this), and if it doesnt you'll need some kind of startup floppy to run the setup off of the CD.

Try Making a win STartup Disk And Run Fdisk on it

To Pastypyro, he is running a 486 which means, as i recall doesnt have the option to boot form the CD rom

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

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Morpheo
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.

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You said at the beginning that you formatted the C drive,
so you must set the boot order to A first,
and boot from a floppy disk.
:cool:

I would recommend reconnecting the flopy (don't think 486 will let you boot from CD)
boot with a win9x startup disk and then do a fdisk /mbr (master boot record) to the HD in question
then run format /u (unconditional) /r (recover I think not sure about that flag) and then begin the linux install (at this point there is no OS on HD and you will see the OS Not found Error if you boot without a disk).

If you want to make it a win9x you can do sys c: with a startup disk that will allow you to boot in to an empty fat 16 HD

Cheers,
-D

When I had an old 486 66 I ran red hat 4.2 without any problems

Cheers,
-D

go into your drives (in bios) and choose 1.44 floppy 3.5", then save to CMOS and exit, now ur pc will restart and it should find the floppy drive.

preep

change the boot order to A: THEN C:

I can't get a DOS promt...i get a "non-system disk or disk error" message, and cannot proceed any further. this happens while the somputer is still running off the BIOS, not DOS or Win. I can get into the BIOS setup and i've turned off the vx stuff, still not working. Also, when i get the error, and i hit enter, it gives me the message again without checking the drive (the green diode doesn't light up)

ru sure that your PC is booting from the floppy?
Can you boot from this floppy on a different PC?
You can tell if you are booting from the floppy, as the diode on the front of the floopy drive will light up, and you will hear the floppy disk griding away as it boots from it. You can do this even if your HDD is not connected.
Do you have any options in the BIOS to say whether it should boot from the floppy first?
You would also get this error if your HDD has no OS/boot sector (which seems likely!), and your floppy is not connected correctly, as the BIOS would then try and boot from the HDD rather than the floopy.

ru sure that your PC is booting from the floppy?
Can you boot from this floppy on a different PC?
You can tell if you are booting from the floppy, as the diode on the front of the floopy drive will light up, and you will hear the floppy disk griding away as it boots from it. You can do this even if your HDD is not connected.
Do you have any options in the BIOS to say whether it should boot from the floppy first?
You would also get this error if your HDD has no OS/boot sector (which seems likely!), and your floppy is not connected correctly, as the BIOS would then try and boot from the HDD rather than the floopy.

Get into bios switch 2 default,optimal or best performance values.Then also turn off virus detection from standard setup.This should help or else ur hard disk is damaged.Which bios do u use ami,award..tellme might help better
best of luck