Reformat Old Computer

Hi,
My friend's brother (who I guess thinks he knows a lot about computers) was visiting her from our of town and told her he would clean off all the junk from her rather old computer.
Well, ever since he did this, the computer will not boot up into windows. We have tried about everything but nothing works.

We tried to boot from a startup disk and decided to reformat it and it must have bad sectors on the hard disk as it started the reformat but after about 68 percent completed, it kept trying to reover allocation units, then after awhile it gave this message, "Not Ready, Format Terminated. "

Then after researching on the internet we tried an F-Disk by that didn't work either. It told us to do a scan disk and gave a message such as:
Scandisk cannot read from the last cluster on drive C. This cluster is either damaged or your system is not configured properly. Drive C may need to have Logical Block Addressing enabled to work properly or this disk partition may be incorrectly marked as a non-LBA partition. Check your bios set up utility. etc. "

Another error was "Scandisk encountered a data error while writing cluster 519306 - cannot fix.

When we start the conputer normally, we get this message:
Cannnot find C: Windows/Himen.Sys, dblbuff.sys, ifshelp.sys. Also, "Windows detected registry/configuration errors.

It is an old computer and not worth taking it to a shop. It sounds like the hard disk has gone bad. Should we just forget the whole thing?

Thanks,
Jean

 

First, go into the CMOS setup and have the system auto-detect the hard drive. This option may not be available.

Check at the hard drive manufacturer's web site for a downloadable drive diagnostic program and run it on the drive. This will verify whether the drive is dying or not, and may be able to repair it by marking the bad spots as unusable.

Some drive manufacturers offered a 3 year warranty on some of their drives. Couldn't hurt to check out whether or not this drive is still covered.

 

Hi,
Thanks for the prompt reply. I first tried going on the Gateway Site (on my computer): http://support.gateway.com/support/allsysteminfo.asp?sn=0007624773# after I put it in the Serial No. and I see where you can download a utility to scan the PC for detailed information on its current configuration, but I can't boot up the troubled computer to download the program. I don't see anywhere where it could be saved on a floppy disk so I can run it on the broken computer.

I did go into the CMOS setup and did not find anything to have the system auto-detect the hard drive. When I was done, I just rebooted the computer and had the same error messages as stated earlier but also noticed it said: Cannot find win.com.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Jean

 

Try going to the hard drive manufacturer's web site instead of the computer's to get the diagnostic program. Thier programs are small enough to fit on a disk.

If you don't know the manufacturer of the hard drive and don't want to look on the top of the drive, download most any one of the hard drive diagnostic programs and run it. It may not diagnose the drive (they're particular about the make of the drive they run on), but it should at least identify the manufacturer of the drive, then you can download thier program.

On all of the diagnostic programs I've seen, you download the file, insert a floppy disk in the drive and double click on the downloaded file. This will create a bootable floppy disk that will automatically run the diagnostic program. Put it in the drive, turn the system on and it'll run.

 

Make a boot disk on any Win98 computer. Now, put the new boot disk in the problem computer's A drive and then start the problem computer. You can select to enable CDRom or not to enable, it makes no difference at this point. When you finally get a flashing A prompt type FDISK /MBR note- there is a space between the K and the / Now,you will get another A prompt - type FDISK - then select enable large drive support when asked, then select show partition information when a menu comes up - make a note of how many and what type of partitions are there, hit esc, now remove the active partition and then remove any other partitions. Finally, create a new DOS partition and make it active when asked. When done, shut down your machine - completely off. You can leave the boot disk in the drive.

Restart the machine and after you choose to enable CDRom support or not and are returned to an A prompt, type FORMAT C: note, there is a space between the T and the C. Once this is done, you can try to install Windows - the drive will be scanned automaticaly and if there are problems, you are going to hear about them - otherwise, do your install.

Personally, I'd stay away from the drive overlays unless or until they become the only way to proceed and do not run an overlay from Manufacturer A on Manufacturer's B drive. Yes, it will work in most cases - but not all and therein lies the danger.

As an alternative, why not ask the "bro" back for a weekend and have him fix it or pay to have it fixed.

 

Hi Rockster2U,

I did do what you said:
put the boot disk in the problem computer's A drive, typed FDISK /MBR , then typed FDISK - then enabled large drive support by click Y and entering.
The message I received was:
"Error Reading Fixed Disk. ".

Does this mean the hard disk is dead?

Jean

 

Most likely.

Have you been able to determine who made the hard drive? If you can, I'm sure someone will post a link to the diagnostic program.

My guess on the "Can not find Win.com" error is that there are some files (Win.com being one of them) that are/were stored in a bad sector(s) on the drive.

Note: The diagnostic program is different from the drive overlay that Rockster2U is refering to.

 

Yes, I have determined that the hard drive is a Western Digital 3.2 GB Ultra ATA IDE Hard Disk Drive. I went on the web site and tried to run a program that they told me to from this page:
http://support.wdc.com/download/#dlgtools
. I downloaded Data Lifeguard v2.8
and did was was instructed. It didn't work. I wrote them the following:
Quote:
I did go to the Western Digital Site and downloaded what I thought was the correct program, DLGDIAG 4.12 and Ran the diagnostics program. It said the model was WDC AC33200L, S/N WD-WM3720837288, Firm 32.41N37 and the code for Drive 0207. When I tried to do the rest it came back with this error:
Fatal Error, Setup of Drive failed because there was a device error reading drive 1. Absolute Sector 4193280 .
Unquote

I received an email from them telling me they would answer as soon as possible.

I'll wait until I hear from them but I'm starting to believe the hard drive is partially dead although when I do a DIR C: I do see some of my friend's files on there.

Jean
P.S. Thanks for all your help. This is challenging to me to try to troubleshoot this problem.

 

OK, my guess is that despite all the problems you appear to be having, since this is an older machine, the CMOS battery ($3-5) could well be shot or at least on its last legs. Any time you unplug the computer, you could be losing the settings corresponding to your hard drive geometry - thus no boot, bad drive, can't be read, destined for deep sixing, minature boat anchor .... etc.

What you need to do is go into your bios by tapping the delete key at startup and find the page where you can auto detect your hard drive. I know you said you tried that before and couldn't find it - well, believe me, it exists. let your BIOS auto detect and reset your hard drive - then you should be able to run a diagnostic utility or FDISK your drive or do about anything you want except soaking it in the bathtub. If you insist that you can't find it, then look up the geometry for your hard drive and set it manually. Save your settings when you exit the BIOS.

If this pans out to be true, anytime you unplug that machine you will hve to repeat the process until you replace the battery. (Easy to do) If, you look up the drive geometry and find it is correctly set in the BIOS, call "BRO ", get his credit card number and buy a new hard drive.

You should be able to pick up a small (less than 6 gig) reconditioned HDD for under $35 or talk some shop out of a used one for a couple of Big Macs.

 

FWIW, here's WD's explanation of that error code:

207

SMART status failed before the media scan.

When they mention the "system option" they're refering to a setting in the CMOS. I don't know why, but a lot of systems I repair have the SMART function disabled in the CMOS. You might see an error message from the SMART function at startup if you were to enable it in the CMOS setup.

 

Hi,
I did look at the setup and could not find anything that would allow me to enable the SMART function.

It is OK tough as my friend just called a short time ago to tell me that her son and daughter are giving them a new computer for Father's Day. They just ordered one from Dell.

To that end, I give up and will return this old computer to them for their disposal.

Thank you for all your excellent help. I learned a lot.

Jean

 

Poor Dudes ............ oh well, at least it will be an improvement.

Not sure but kinda think things got misunderstood. SMART function has nothing (ie: notta, notta) to do with HDD auto detect. Most high end gamers and power user's don't enable SMART drive technology monitoring. In essence, with SMART drive setting enabled in the BIOS, the drive is supposed to report back to you when an impending failure is forthcoming. I'm sure Cliffh knows this but Jean, you may have confused the two. I've never seen it cause an error message at startup but that certainly doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Obviously, the WD diagnostics picked it up.

Sorry to hear you are throwing in the towel but it may be the best move.

 

Hi,

I agree, I think I did get confused on what I was supposed to do but then I'm not very experienced in this line of computer work.

I help the Senior Citizens here in Florida learn the basics of computers and getting email to their relatives in the North. That's the main thing I'm good at, explaining the basics of learning software programs. I think I'll stick to that.

Thanks again.

Jean

 

Maybe you can round up a small hard dive and end up with a second computer? It might come in handy as a teaching aid - let the folks you're helping mess with it instead of your personal system.

The error message I was refering to earlier would be something along the lines of "SMART has detected that the hard drive is failing. Backup your data and replace the hard drive ". Not really an error message, more of a warning instead.

Rockster2U

What's your opinion on why folks would leave the SMART option disabled? I can't see any reason for disabling it - all it does is run one quick test on startup.

 

A little cut and paste for your reading pleasure RE: S.M.A.R.T.

This feature enables or disables support for the hard disk's S.M.A.R.T. capability. S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring Analysis And Reporting Technology) is supported by all current hard disks and it allows the early prediction and warning of impending hard disk disasters. You should enable it if you want to use S.M.A.R.T.-aware utilities to monitor the hard disk's condition. Enabling it also allows the monitoring of the hard disk's condition over a network.

However, there's a possibility that enabling S.M.A.R.T. may cause spontaneous reboots with networked computers. Apparently, S.M.A.R.T. continuously sends packets of data through the network even when there's actually nothing monitoring those data packets. Therefore, if you experience spontaneous reboots or crashes with a networked computer, try disabling this feature.

While S.M.A.R.T., at first glance, looks like a really great safety feature, it isn't really useful or necessary for most users. For S.M.A.R.T. to work, it isn't simply a matter of enabling it in the BIOS. You actually have to keep a S.M.A.R.T.-aware hardware monitoring utility running in the background all the time. This means using up some memory and processor time just to monitor S.M.A.R.T. data from the hard disk.

That's quite alright if the hard disk you are using is highly unreliable and you need advanced warning of any impending failure. However, hard disks these days are reliable enough to make S.M.A.R.T. redundant in most cases. Unless you are running mission-critical applications, it's very unlikely that S.M.A.R.T. will be of any use at all.

Please note that even if you don't use any S.M.A.R.T.-aware utility, enabling S.M.A.R.T. in the BIOS uses up some bandwidth because the hard disk will be constantly sending out data packets. So, if you do not use S.M.A.R.T.-aware utilities or if you don't need that level of real-time reporting, disable HDD S.M.A.R.T. Capability for better overall performance.

Some of the newer BIOSes now come with S.M.A.R.T. monitoring support built-in. When you enable this feature, the BIOS checks the hard disk's S.M.A.R.T. status at boot-up. However, such a feature has very limited utility as it can only tell you the status of the hard disk at boot-up. It cannot keep track of the hard disk's condition during operation and therefore, it is far less useful than a proper S.M.A.R.T.-aware monitoring utility. In addition, there have been reports of false alarms raised by such built-in software. Therefore, it is still advisable for you to disable HDD S.M.A.R.T. Capability.

 

Thanks Rockster2U

The last paragraph has the info I was most interested in. For those of us that start the system once a day (more often if Windows is misbehaving), the SMART check at startup can at least give some advance warning. A double check with the diagnostic software would probably be a good idea.

 

Hi

last ditch suggestion:

there's an alternate way to jumper Western Digital HDDs which have 10 pin jumper blocks - gets round HDD/BIOS misrecognition problems if even the data lifeguard tools are not seeing the drive correctly

Don't try this if the drive has a 9pin jumper block!!
Don't try this if running NT, Novell Netware, or UNIX!!

ASCII art you are looking at the end of the drive where the connectors are...

40 pin IDE connector ooooo PSU connector
40 pin IDE connector ooooo PSU connector

the
ooooo
ooooo
is the jumper block

(on a 9way jumper block the bottom left pin is missing when viewed like this)

with the 10 pin jumper block:

oo||o
oo||o if drive is single

oo|o|
oo|o| if drive is the master and a slave device is on the cable

ooo||
ooo|| if drive is slave

o = leave pin not connected
| = fit jumper to join "above" to "below" along the vertical lines

then you will need to fudge these settings into the CMOS
LBA: disable if you have the option
HDD type: User Defined:
1023 cylinders
16 heads
63 sectors

then, try doing the EZ-install thing or the diagnostics from the data lifeguard tools, they may play better

amazingly this has been known to work! although whether it will in your case... upon reading and re-reading the thread I am still not really sure that the SMART result was valid...

if you have nothing to lose it could be worth a try perhaps

Good Luck anyway, Hugh.

 

Yeah, that SMART message error is a question mark with me too as I don't think her drive or her motherboard even supports it. You raise a very good point. I wasn't going to argue with the actual message having occured but if her drive doesn't support it, then the error message is quite understandable even if the drive is in perfect condition.

If we could just get Jean to set the drive parameters in the bios (and I trust your jumpering and settings recommendations), then she should be able to kill any partitons, rebuild them and scan that puppy.

C'mon Jean - whatever you do, you can't mess it up any more than it already is. Besides, you've got BRO to fall back on - He's the perfect excuse. Why not give it a whirl ..... ?

 

Hi Guys,

I would try what your are suggesting but I'm afraid it is over my head. I really don't understand what Hugh is really talking about especially when he said
"
ASCII art you are looking at the end of the drive where the connectors are...

40 pin IDE connector ooooo PSU connector
40 pin IDE connector ooooo PSU connector

As I told you before, I'm not technical when it comes to opening up the computer case and changing things.

I'll think about it though and get back to you later after celebrating Father's Day.

And a very Happy Father's Day to all of you if indeed it is applicable.

Jean

 

Those little ooooo thingys are the pins on the back of your hard drive. And the l signifies a jumper put over the pin. So,
ooo l o
ooo l o
would mean a jumper goes on the fourth pin (there are two rows) reading left to right. I thought it was quite ingenious, but can understand that you thought Hugh Jarss smoked one too many while matriculating at MIT. Then again Jean, he put a key at the bottom of his post, so maybe you were the one playing hookey.

C'mon, give it a whirl