Upgrading and Repairing PCs

Start the system using a Windows startup disk, or any bootable MS-DOS disk that contains FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, SYS.COM, and SCANDISK.EXE (Windows 95B or later versions preferred).

If your system can't boot from the floppy, you might have more serious problems with your hardware. Check the floppy drive and the motherboard for proper installation and configuration. On some systems, the BIOS configuration doesn't list the floppy as a boot device or puts it after the hard disk. Reset the BIOS configuration to make the floppy disk the first boot device if necessary and restart your computer.

Run FDISK from the Windows startup disk. Select option 4 (Display partition information).

If the partitions are listed, make sure that the bootable partition (usually the primary partition) is defined as active (look for an uppercase A in the Status column).

If no partitions are listed and you do not want to recover any of the data existing on the drive now, use FDISK to create new partitions, and then use FORMAT to format the partitions. This overwrites any previously existing data on the drive.

If you want to recover the data on the drive and no partitions are being shown, you must use a data recovery program, such as the Norton Utilities by Symantec or Lost and Found by PowerQuest, to recover the data.

If all the partitions appear in FDISK.EXE and one is defined as active, run the SYS command as follows to restore the system files to the hard disk:

SYS C:

For this to work properly, it is important that the disk you boot from be a startup disk from the same operating system (or version of Windows) you have on your hard disk.

You should receive the message System Transferred if the command works properly. Remove the disk from drive A:, and restart the system. If you still have the same error after you restart your computer, your drive might be improperly configured or damaged.

Run SCANDISK from the Windows startup disk or an aftermarket data-recovery utility, such as the Norton Utilities, to check for problems with the hard disk.

Using SCANDISK, perform a surface scan. If SCANDISK reports any physically damaged sectors on the hard disk, the drive might need to be replaced.