Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!gatech!prism!gt0652b
From: gt0652b@prism.gatech.EDU (I don't know man, he was just here)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Problem
Message-ID: <24341@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 14 Mar 91 16:18:10 GMT
References: <6391@oasys.dt.navy.mil>
Distribution: na
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 39

In article <6391@oasys.dt.navy.mil> dowling@oasys.dt.navy.mil (John Dowling) writes:
>I've just run into a hard disk problem that I hope someone has some
>insight on.  Simply put, the hard drive on my month-old Epson Apex no
>longer boots.  The drive worked flawlessly until I turned on the machine
>last night. Instead of the familiar C:/ prompt, I received the message
>"non-system disk..." and the machine would go no farther.  I turned

There are several thing that might be wrong with the disk.

1. First, if you are using DOS 4.01, try reinstalling dos from the 
   orgonal floppies. Sometimes the boot sector gets messed up using this
   version of dos. With 4.01, you can't just load a new command.com and
   be over with it. Instead, you have to install all 7 disks.

2. If the disk boots up some of the time, then you might need to do a 
   low level format of your drive with Fdisk.exe. This is the only case
   where an MS-DOS computer will do things some of the time. It works
   tis way because dos reads a drive 3 times before it determines that 
   the drive is unreadable. If had a marjinally bad sector, then it might
   get read by the 3rd try and boot.

3. You mentioned earlier that you had tried to repartition you hard disk.
   You didn't, by chance, happen to run  to run any of the following:

 	1. A different version of DOS (Big Mistake: frags whole drive)
	2. An earlier version of PCtools or Norton utilities.
	3. Windows 3.0, Smartdrive, and Disk Managerr at the same time.

   If you did, then my sympathies. Try reformatting your hard disk or
   using a disk recovery program such as Pctools' Diskfix.exe. But,
   be warned, these programs can REALLY screw up your data!

See ya

-- 
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