Machine will not boot

[moolie]

Master Boot Record not found.

OR

No Operating System found.

Error messages on bootup.

Was updated to SP2 about a month ago and then has been sitting unused and turned off since then.

Now I need to re-deploy this machine and Either the OS is toast of my BIOS cannot find the hard drive to boot.

Can't boot from CD or Floppy either.

SUggestions on how to rescue this machine are always helpfull.

 

[rpiver]

Moolie, you said that:

BIOS cannot find the hard drive to boot.

Can't boot from CD or Floppy either

I would open the box and make sure that the cables are connected to the Hard Drive, CD and Floppy. If the machine has been sitting around, there is no telling if somebody has been into it.

If the cables are connected reseat them just in case then see if the drives are recognized in the bios.

I saw something similiar to this not long ago and it turned out that something was shorting the motherboard. I took out the motherboard and screwed it back in carefully and everything worked. However, with that said, I would check the cables first.

Also check in the Bios to make sure that the IDE controller hasn't been disabled for some reason or another.

Hope this helps,
Rad Piver

http://www.globalstrata.com

 

[bcastner]

If you open the box I suspect you will find the hard drive is gone.
It likely was used for parts on another repair project.

 

[moolie]

Ha ha!

bcastner, it was the very first thing that I checked when I got the error message.

ALL hardware components are physically in their original state. Machine was removed from the box, updated, deployed, where is was used for about 9 months. They SP2 was applied and it's been turned off ever since. Sitting idle for about 2 months. I did remove the IDE cabling and then reseat everything and still nothing. I reset thge Bios to default and still nothing.

Any other suggestions before I call IBM for a new HDD.

 

[rpiver]

When you boot up the machine, have the box open and if possible put your hand on the hard drive. Does it feel like the hard drive is Spinning?

Also, it is possible that the IDE controller has gone bad.

Another option, is to take the hard drive out of that computer and put it in another one to see if the BIOS will recognize it in the other computer. You could also set it as a secondary hard drive, just in case it does come up to see if you can access any of the data.

Rad

 

[bcastner]

You laugh, but I have seen it happen before where people have "borrowed" or swapped components.

The normal steps would be to rewrite the MBR using Recovery Console and the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT commands. But if the BIOS cannot see the hard drive I would suspect physical damage -- most likely the box was dropped when it was moved at some point.

 

[moolie]

The disk does spin up. The other odd item here I forgot to mention + No Post Beeps. The post logs show errors as described above, but no beeps on boot.

 

[rpiver]

So is the CD drive recognized in the BIOS?

As I mentioned before, I would put the hard drive in another machine also, just to rule out whether it is the actual hard drive or controller.

 

[bcastner]

I would not discount rpiver's argument for a possibly failed controller, although I would have thought the POST would show this, particularly on an IBM BIOS.

The BIOS is as dependent as the OS on the validity of the MBR of the drive. Dropping a desktop even two feet would be enough to make the drive unreadable. IBM offers a drive diagnostic utility that creates its own bootable image you could use without flipping the drive between machines. If the drive is by MAXTOR, Western Digital or others they offer as well on their websites a diagnostic/setup floppy image creator.

 

[moolie]

All fixed up.

This model has a maxtor HDD. I got a disk utility off of their website that found and repaired the missing master boot sector, as well as a couple other bad sectors on the drive. Once that was done I re-formated and re-partitioned the drive and then re-installed XP.

Turns out NOT to have anything to do with the bios or the OS. This should have been posted on a hardware forum. Thanks everyone who helped out.