Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!isgate!krafla!frisk From: frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Re: Hard Drives Not being recognized after bootup Keywords: Hard Drives,Problems,Help,Info Message-ID: <3004@krafla.rhi.hi.is> Date: 3 Apr 91 19:51:44 GMT References: Reply-To: frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) Organization: University of Iceland (RHI) Lines: 20 A corrupted CMOS is a possibility, but that should be easy to check just by running the SETUP utility of that particular machine. A damaged controller is also a possible explanation, but I suspect it might be just a corrupted partition boot table. If the last two bytes of track 0, head 0, sector 1 are not AA55, the BIOS will not attempt to boot from the hard disk, and it will appear not to exist. This may happen when some program overwrites the PBR, sometimes by accident, but many Trojans and viruses do it as well. The partition boot record is not needed until the next time you start up the machine, so the symptoms would be just as you described. In fact, this just happeded to my virus-test machine - for the 5th time. My suggestion in your case - run NDD, (Norton 4.5, not 5.0) -frisk Fridrik Skulason University of Iceland | Technical Editor of the Virus Bulletin (UK) | Reserved for future expansion E-Mail: frisk@rhi.hi.is Fax: 354-1-28801 |