No valid FAT or FAT32 partition

When I started up my Win98 system this morning, I received the following error: "Insert system diskette and press Enter key to reboot ". I dug out my start up disk and while doing it's thing, I received this message: "Win98 has detected that drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition ". Everything was working fine yesterday. Lucky me!

I can get into BIOS and it sees the drive at 221321MB. If I'm not wrong, this means that I have a 221GB drive. My drive is only 123.5GB (according to the label). That's a big difference. I can't get into SAFE mode. I tried a new cable, no change. I checked all cables and cords to make sure of a tight connection. I removed the disk and put it into my XP system. It is recognized as a Removable Disk. If I double click on the drive, it states: "Please insert a disk into drive I: ". A right click and select properties then hardware tab, the drive is seen as a hard drive. It says that the drive is working properly, but there is no other information available (such as volume size). I have not changed any software or hardware in the last few months.

There isn't allot on the drive that can't be replaced (at a cost), but is there a way to recover the FAT partition on the C: drive and make things work again. All my data that I would need is on the other partitions. Any suggestions on getting this thing going again? Thanks in advance!

Mike

 

Boot into the Bios and see if the hard drive is correctly recognized. Check to see if detection is set to Auto. If the hard drive isn't recognized and it is set to auto detect you may have to set the hard drive up manually. Also the Cmos battery may be dead or weak and is losing the settings.

 

Whiskeyman,

Thanks for the reply. I put the drive back in the system and started it up. I missed my chance to get into BIOS and it gave me the "Insert system diskette..." message. So, I rebooted and went into BIOS. The hard disk is now recognized with a size of 137469MB and is set to Auto. I exited out of BIOS and Windows started up. Everything is fine, for the time being. I am going to get a new battery for it and see if that helps. I'm sure it's the original battery, just over 7 years old.

Mike

 

That is a long time for a battery. Afetr you change it make sure you go back into the Bios and reset everything the way you want then Exit and Save the settings.

 

Nothing changed in my BIOS, so I'm good to go. I've restarted a few times today and everything works as before. Thanks for the help and I'll post back if something comes up.

Mike

 

Well, it's back. This time with a twist. While working in a program, the screen went black and gave me a "1780. IDE Channel Master Drive Changed" error. I got into BIOS and it shows "none" for IDE Primary Channel Master. Not good. I rebooted several times to try and get it to find the drive. Sometimes, I can get to the Windows 98 screen and it freezes. Sometimes, I get the "Insert system diskette..." message. I get to the point where Microsoft scandisk runs, but it stops at about 42% and I have to restart. Once, I even got to the startup menu and tried to go to SAFE mode. No luck, it froze up.

If it's getting to the Win98 screen and scandisk, it must be reading Windows somewhere. Correct? Is this a hard drive problem or motherboard? I could try to find another hard drive to see if that works, but if the IDE channel is having problems, that won't help right? Any suggestions on where to go from here? Thanks.

Mike

 

Did you replace the battery? Did you reset the Bios to the default settings? Is the hard drive set to be recognized automatically?

 

Hi Mike,
You can get those sorts of problems from a corrupt MBR (especially if a Dynamic Drive Overlay is installed). Run the HDD manufacturer's utilities, they can "see" the HDD even if the BIOS can't (You have pulled and reseated the cables at both the drive and the motherboard? Try swapping the data cables).

Use the "backup MBR" in the utilities if it is there. Backup your data immediately, if you can get back into Windows.

If the MBR is corrupt you may end up having to repartition and reformat the drive with the manufacturers utilities (don't install any DDO).

If you can get the drive recognized in the BIOS, try running the Windows CD setup from a boot disk. Let it run the drive check at the beginning of the setup.

Matt

 

Whiskeyman,

I did replace the battery, I did not reset the BIOS to default (I don't think anything has ever been changed, but I'll try it), and the hard drive is set to auto detect.

Matt,

I'll download the utilities and try that. I don't have any overlay software, so we can rule that out. I have pulled the cables from both ends and reseated them. I even tried a different working cable with no luck. Funny you should mention the corrupt MBR. If I remember correctly, that was mentioned about two years ago when I had problems with another hard drive in the same system. Isn't it strange that the same problem would occur? Is this a sign of the system dying on me? If this is the problem, can I just format the C: drive and reload Windows keeping all infomation intact on the other partitions? The only thing I would like to save is about 8GB of music that I have downloaded. Everything else can be replaced. If I can get the drive going again, I will backup everything ASAP. I'll give things a try tomorrow.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Mike

 

Nope, not from my experience. For me, Norton Antivirus was the cause, trying to "innoculate" the boot sector. Edit: another was a DDO that did not like the change in HDD configuration...maybe I can think of others, but that may take some time

If the HDD's utilities say the drive is OK, then the drive is OK.

Only if the drive turns out to be recognized and completely stable. If you are in a situation where you are looking to repartition, boot to a startup disk and enter
fdisk /mbr (I have not used it, I hope that is the command...search this forum or Windows knowledgebase).

Matt

 

Houston, we have a problem.

This is what I did this morning, and personally, it doesn't look to promising.
I thought I would try to start it up normally. I got the startup menu, so I chose normal. I then got the Microsoft Scandisk. It ran to 99% and then froze at that point. I did a CAD and received the 1780 error message. Hit Enter and got the system diskette error. Another CAD and F1 to get to BIOS. No hard drive listed. F1 to reset default BIOS settings and exit, saving the change. I got an 8603 PS/2 Pointing Device Error (I have an USB mouse). I hit Enter and got the system diskette error.

Restart and no change. CAD and back into BIOS. Changed settings back, exit, save, and diskette error. Inserted start-up disk and CAD. Started with CD-ROM support and got the "valid FAT" message. Ran scandisk and the surface scan. Received "Scandisk did not find any problems on Drive C: ".

Inserted the hard drive manufacturer's utilities disk and CAD. Recieved "Non-system disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready" message. Hit Enter and got the same message.

Another CAD. Scandisk started and I hit enter to exit. Win98 screen came up and desktop loaded. Once loaded, it froze and I could get nowhere. A CAD did not do anything. I unplugged and restarted. 1780 error then the system diskette error. Unplugged the system.

Replaced the hard drive, with one I had, put in my CDBoot disk to format the drive, and restarted. I checked BIOS and the hard drive was detected with the right volume. I exited BIOS. The disk ran and I proceeded to the A: prompt. I type in FORMAT C: and hit enter. "Invalid drive specification ". No matter what drive letter I used, only A: would be valid.

Is this a problem with the Primary Channel cutting in and out? Can I format this drive in my XP system and have it work for WIN98? Will that even matter if the 98 system can't even find the disk in the first place? What now? Thanks!

Mike

 

One extra bit of information. I just tried installing the hard drive into my XP system. The system will not boot and asks for a system disk to be inserted. I tried both cable select and slave settings on the drive. Back to a failed hard drive?

 

To test the hard drive as slave on the WinXP setup you need to change the jumper on the Master drive to Master/Dual dirves, Master with Slave or etc. or it cannot recognize that a Slave drive is being used. That is probably the cause of that error. As for trying the other drive on the Win98 CP have you checked Device Manager for any errors expecially for the IDE controllers?

 

Whiskeyman,

Thanks for the tip. I don't remember doing that before, but it worked. My drive's partitions were seen briefly, then disappeared. No luck getting anything off of it or seeing any part of it. My data recovery program can not see any of the drive either.

Neither drive will start up, so I can not get to Device Manager to look for any errors.

On a side note, but related to all of this. I decided to put my old drive in and FDISK, format, and reload Windows. This is the drive that I had problems with a couple years ago. It was suggested then that I might be able to still use the drive. Any ways.... Using a boot disk, I got into FDISK. I was asked about the NTFS partition on the drive. This drive has only had Win98 on it. Where did the NTFS partition come from? I deleted all partitions and it's drive scan, but it could never get above 46%. I assume the drive is shot. Correct?

Out of curiousity, I put the current problem drive in and checked it's partition information in FDISK. I came up with a Primary DOS of 10605MB and FAT32. I also had a EXT partition of 41656MB and no FAT listed. Those are the sizes, basically, of my first two partitions. The rest are not seen. This is a 120GB drive. Any thoughts on that info?

Mike

 

A bad floppy, format or download of the utility (You did uncompress and run the executable? It is probably a self-extracting .exe.)

I don't think you will be able to get much further until you can check the drive with the utilities, they should even be able to tell you about the status of the IDE controller if that seems to be the problem.

Matt

 

Matt,

I downloaded the program and double clicked the icon. It asked for the floppy and did it's thing. I can try again if you think that will help. Any thoughts on the messed up system file with the old drive and why I can't FDISK it?

Mike

 

If you are not concerned about file recovery on the drive that stated it had NTFS on it try KillDisk to wipe it clean of everything then FDISK and format the drive with the WinME bootdisk.

 

Matt,

I redid the download and diskette for the hard drive software. This time the disk worked. It scanned the system for drives and only came up with my CD drives. There is nothing showing up for the primary connector. I then decided to check my spare drive (different brand). That drive came up as failing and should be replaced. Of course the warranty ran out in November of last year. Oh well. The thing that I wanted to note is the results for the Installation Confirmation test that ran. It tested the power connection, interface cable connection, master/slave jumpers, BIOS extension support, and partition information. All of them passed. I assume that that means the primary IDE channel is fine.

If I could just get the drive to be recognized, I could transfer my data off it and try to start over. Any thoughts from here?

Mike

 

Whiskeyman,

Thanks for the tip, but it looks like that drive will hit the trash. Maxtor's tests showed that the drive is going bad and should be replaced. Luckily, I was able to recover all my data off of that one before it got any worse. If I get the other drive backed up, I may try your suggestion on it.

Mike

 

could try- remove the cd drive(s) and connect the hdd to the 2nd IDE channel.
When you put the hdd into the case's hdd slot be sure it does not fix to tight. I just had a problem with a 1yr old hdd in a too tight slot, intermittently seen in bios and would turn off intermittently.

If the hdd can be seen correctly in the bios (reboot and check several times) can try "testdisk" to search for lost partitions. read the how to use at site
http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

If your bios has Power monitor section check the voltages.

When you put the hdd into the XP box did you make sure the XP hdd was also jumper correctly ? Some hdds need jumper for Master only or Master with slave.