MS-DOS

T

Tim F

I am an interested 'new' user to DOS. i am trying to get back into it. but i
have a problem with my hard drive. I am running a 386, and DOS will install
ok. i restart, and it cannot pick up my hard drive any more. it says invalid
drive specification, suggesting that the artition table might be damaged,
but i hae just installed DOS. anyone have any suggestions, know where i can
go for info?

Thanks
 
J

John Vinson

I am an interested 'new' user to DOS. i am trying to get back into it. but i
have a problem with my hard drive. I am running a 386, and DOS will install
ok. i restart, and it cannot pick up my hard drive any more. it says invalid
drive specification, suggesting that the artition table might be damaged,
but i hae just installed DOS. anyone have any suggestions, know where i can
go for info?

Thanks
Click to expand...

wheeeuuuwwww... DOS? as in 1988 or so? Twenty-five years ago?

I'm not sure there ARE any DOS newsgroups around, but this isn't one.
This newsgroup is for the Microsoft Office database program Access.
Let's see...

I have NO idea if there is anything in these but SPAM but try:

alt.msdos
comp.msdos.programmer
comp.os.msdos

and good luck!

(just from curiosity - do you drive a Packard, or a Nash? <g>)

John W. Vinson[MVP]
Join the online Access Chats
Tuesday 11am EDT - Thursday 3:30pm EDT
http://community.compuserve.com/msdevapps
 
J

James Hahn

You will have a much better chance of a sensible response if you repost the
message in
microsoft.public.win3x_wfw_dos
 
D

Dirk Goldgar

Tim F said:
I am an interested 'new' user to DOS. i am trying to get back into
it. but i have a problem with my hard drive. I am running a 386, and
DOS will install ok. i restart, and it cannot pick up my hard drive
any more. it says invalid drive specification, suggesting that the
artition table might be damaged, but i hae just installed DOS. anyone
have any suggestions, know where i can go for info?

Thanks
Click to expand...

DOS ... wow. As others have mentioned, this is not the right newsgroup,
though lots of us have careers stretching back to even before DOS. What
version of DOS? It occurs to me that your hard drive may be too big for
DOS to manage. I remember hard drives started to become available that
were larger than DOS and/or the computers' BIOS could handle. Seems to
me there were BIOS extender utilities, and you had to partition the hard
disk into smaller sections.
 
D

Dr. Know

Tim F said:
I am an interested 'new' user to DOS. i am trying to get back into it. but i
have a problem with my hard drive. I am running a 386, and DOS will install
ok. i restart, and it cannot pick up my hard drive any more. it says invalid
drive specification, suggesting that the artition table might be damaged,
but i hae just installed DOS. anyone have any suggestions, know where i can
go for info?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Sure - being one of those who was aroung in the CPM days - and dare I
say - even longer...

Boot from the DOS floppy. When you get a command prompt (A:\) ,
type

SYS C:

That will transfer IO.SYS, DOS.SYS and the master boot track files to
your hard drive. It should then boot.

If you have a defective drive, however, this will not work.

Also, you might scan the drive AND the DOS diskettes for a boot sector
virus that was common in the mid 90's. It will cause the drive to
refuse to boot, and many utilities will show the drive as bad.

If this is the case, then type:

FDISK /MBR C:

and that wil overwrite the boot track, then:

FDISK C:

and create one PRIMARY partition for your data.
Then:

SYS C: the drive.

Good Luck, I still have one of those 386 40's with an outboard math
co-processor. Don't have the heart to throw it away 'cause I built
it. I use it on the bench to run a PIC microcontroller programmer.


Dr. Know
 
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