Computer help! Desperate! Error???

[aquart]

Disk I/O error

Replace disk and press any key.

There is no floppy disk in the floppy drive. Did the hard drive just die?

I'm at my Mom's. I'm on my uncle's pc now. Mom's is the one that is having the error message.

[tk2kewl]

1. HD sounds bad

PM me

[kenny blankenship]

2. Or maybe the drive data cable is loose

You would have to shut down the PC, disconnect it from the AC power at the wall, find the drive inside the box and make sure the cable is pressed in firmly. Follow the cable to the motherboard, check that it is pressed in there firmly too.

Don't monkey around inside without disconnecting the AC power cord at the wall. Modern powersupplies will still be on in ghost mode otherwise. Yeah there is a rockerswitch near the cable on the back of the powersupply to break the physical connection, but it would be irresponsible of me not to advise pulling the plug at the wall when working inside. The danger is mostly that you could damage the board, but there's always a risk of shock as well.

[Nomad559]

3. Can you

start the computer In safe mode?

[aquart]

6. No.

[aquart]

7. Rebooted, got into bios.

Everything looks dandy, looking at that. Is there something that should stick out like a sore thumb?

[kenny blankenship]

8. try detecting hd in bios

if it won't report cyls/heads/sectors or whatever it's fried, or no power to it, or drive cable is not attached.
You can also disable floppies in bios to preclude the possibility that the floppy is dead and that is throwing the boot sequence off. I don't really know if that is a possible source of failure to boot but it's something that can be eliminated.

[aquart]

9. It seemed to detect the hard drive.

I went down to the part of the bios that does that and it looked like everything was normal. I saw the correct size for the hard drive. "cyls/heads/sectors"??? I think it did but I'm going back for another look to be sure that's what I saw.

[kenny blankenship]

10. Did you go through the process of detecting or

just saw that there were numbers there? It will remember the old numbers from last time detection was run. To learn anything useful from this step in the bios, you must enter whatever keystrokes are required to go through detection process and then say the right thing y or n when it asks whether you want to "skip detection" for each one.

The detection could fail or it might report fewer cyls than the label on the drive indicates should be there. Only way to know what it is supposed to be is to look at the label, though. Of course if you noticed that the number reported by BIOS for cyls/heads/sects changed when you run detection, so it differs from the previously remembered value, that would tell you something has gone wrong too, without having to look inside at the label.

You might try also putting the drive in PIO mode instead of UDMA* or AUTO. Sometimes drives fail DMA transfers, but can be accessed (very slowly) in programmed interrupt PIO mode. If this were the case, it wouldn't help much because it would almost as bad as an outright death of the drive. It would be deteriorating and not long for this world.

I don't know if a failing CDROM could stop the bios from basically booting up, but CDROMS do fail quite often compared to hds and can cause IDE bus errors a plenty when they are failing. You could try disabling the cdrom's ide position in the BIOS, if it and the booting hd share an IDE channel. Or disconnecting the cdrom altogether from the cable, and rearranging the hd jumpers to single master or cable select or whatever is indicated on the label.

[aquart]

12. I would never have known this.

Will try it all in the morning. This isn't a new machine. It was mine and I gave it to my mom when I got another. But there is a difficulty with the cd-rom, so far as I know, the only disk it won't read is Win98SE which works just fine everywhere else. But I have another drive somewhere, and this may force me to actually install it. If it's a hard drive...OY! Cross that bridge when I get there.

Sleep well!

[aquart]

16. I have auto detection of hard disks. I ran that.

Size: 4311
Cylin: 14848
Head: 9
WPcom: 0
Sec: 63
Everything else on the line is Mode.

[mcscajun]

4. It's not necessarily a hard drive death...could be that the boot record

is corrupted.

Do you have an emergency boot floppy diskette on hand? or a Norton emergency diskette?

If all else fails, there are hard disk recovery services out there.

[aquart]

5. I have them at home, not here.

Thank you. I'll try it. I'll try everything.

[Floogeldy]

11. Let me get this straight . . .

Your Mom and Uncle live together?

:o

[Heidi]

14. I can't wait to see the Excel spreadsheet . . .

that results from the answers you're accumulating tonight, Floog. :rofl:

[aquart]

15. Aww, I wish it was so sweet.

They're in their 80s. He has 4 fatal diseases and a wife with Alzheimer's. So Mom took them in to make sure they get proper nutrition. And because she remembers the boy who fought for her in the schoolyard.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

13. Do you have a floppy or a CD in the drive? If so take it out.