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From: resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Philip Resnik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Intermittent hard drive problem -- help?!
Message-ID: <29584@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 14 Sep 90 22:16:35 GMT
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Philip Resnik)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 46


THE COMPUTER: Multitech Acer 910 (80286), with Seagate 40Meg drive,
Western Digital (WAH-1003) hard drive controller.

THE PROBLEM: On power-up, the hard drive light goes bright for a
second, then dims.  Instead of brightening up again and seeing booting
from the hard drive, I receive a message, "Unable to boot from hard
drive 1.  Press F1 to continue."  I'm then told to insert a system
disk in drive A --- after booting from drive A, the C drive is
unrecognized (invalid drive).  

If, instead, I start with a system floppy in A, I receive the message 
"Unable to initialize hard drive 1", and the machine boots from A ---
once again, the C drive is then unrecognized.

WHAT I'VE DONE: After trying basic things like re-seating the
controller card in its slot, cleaning the contacts, etc., I brought
the machine to a computer repair shop.  They re-formatted the hard
drive, ran diagnostics, and told me that everything was fine.  After I
brought the machine home, it worked for a few hours, but the next time
I powered up, the exact same problem recurred.  I brought it back
(labor good for 90 days, they say), and left it with them.  After a
week or so, I was told that the machine had displayed *no problems at
all* in their shop: they'd powered up and down many times, re-seated
the card, run diagnostics for hours on end (long enough to detect any
thermal problems).  They told me that if I could reproduce the problem
in their shop, they'd be happy to look at it... I couldn't.

Have you guessed?  I brought the machine home, and it worked for a
day, and then this morning the same problem happened again.  I'm
currently working from the A drive only --- and I don't know what to
do next.  I brought it to a professional shop, and that didn't solve
it.  What's left?  (My wife suggests it's a gypsy curse, but I have my
doubts...)

If anybody has seen a problem like this before and can make a
suggestion, please let me know --- preferably via e-mail to
resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu.  My computer and I would much appreciate
your assistance.

  Philip


resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu
Computer and Information Science, Moore School of Engineering
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104