Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!shell
From: shell@hoptoad.uucp (Shelly Culbertson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: puzzler
Message-ID: <9205@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 6 Dec 89 08:18:39 GMT
Reply-To: shell@hoptoad.UUCP (Shelly Culbertson)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 32


 I hope it isn't a breach of etiquette to post an appeal for help like this,
but the only advice I've been able to get locally (Northern Humboldt County,
almost Oregon) is "re-format your hard drive...".

I own a 286 clone, economy model, monochrome, 640 K RAM and 30 Meg hard disk.
(Also, 1 floppy drive.)  It's worked quite reliably for me for the past six
months.  I use it mainly for text processing and for telecommunications.
Well, yesterday it suddenly developed an inability to boot from the hard
drive.  When I turn it on, I can watch it check the RAM, and it tells me
there are 0 verified errors on the fixed disk (both of these the same as
it's always been), and then the system hangs.  No prompt.  The only keystrokes
which have any effect are Ctl-Alt-Del, which bring about a repeat of this
situation.
	I happen to have on hand a Falcon DOS 3.1 system disk.  I can boot
the computer with this in drive A.  Then I can use Xtree to check out the
hard disk.  I don't have a photographic memory (in my head, that is), but
everything looks about the same as it always has.  Autoexec.bat is there,
the path is there, command.com is there (of course they're there, I've
never had any reason to mess with them).  Once the computer has booted up,
I can remove the disk from drive A and run it as I am accustomed to from
the hard disk.  It just won't boot from drive C alone (even though it always
did before and I didn't consciously change anything....).
	Why might this be happening?  I appreciate any suggestions.  Even
though I have most of my data backed up, I do not look forward to rebuilding
20 megabytes of the hard disk that I've learned to call home, if I must
re-format it as I have been advised to do.  And this might not even solve 
the problem anyway...

Shelly Culbertson		shell@hoptoad.UUCP	voice: (707) 839-2265

"Fax me a donut!"  -- Phil Spector