Hi folks,

I'm having problems getting into my hard-drive, I keep getting a "disk boot failure" message. I have tried using my start up disk (win 98), but no joy.
How else can I get into my hard drive?

I would also like to up grade a laptop, both processor and harddrive. Currently running a pentium 1 processor and 800mb hard-drive. (Need less to say it's extremely slow.....). Any advice out there?


Chris

Chris,

Unless you're an absolute guru at building laptops, I'm afraid there's no decent processor upgrade path for your old Pentium 1 system. The motherboard in it will only be able to support Pentium 1 processors, which only go up to 233MHz max. Upgrading a motherboard in a laptop is a VERY specialist task.

If you go onto Dell's web site (http://www.dell.co.uK), you can get brand new 2400MHz laptops for about £600!

If your budget doesn't stretch to that, I would strongly recommend checking out what Paul Durkin at IT Dealers has got on sale (http://www.itdealers.co.uk). He has some excellent second-hand refurbished stock in the £200-£300 range.

With regards to the hard disk, they are a universal size (2.5" wide). However, whilst most are about 9mm tall, I've found that some can be 11mm tall. This is the difference between just about squeezing inside nice and tight ... and not fitting. Measure your existing hard disk before sourcing a replacement.

If you're looking for 2 upgrades, though, I would sell your existing laptop on http://www.qxl.co.uk and just buy a better one - it won't cost much more but you'll get a whole host of benefits

Thnks for the feedback on the laptop. It has saved me a big headache. Do you have any advice on the issue of getting into my fualty hard drive? (1st question!) I'd really appreciate some advice.

Check the following things;

• Is the HDD being detected in the initial boot up screen (where it lists your cd-rom and any other HDD/ide devices)
• No non-bootable CDs or floppy disks are inserted.
• Your CMOS setup has the correct boot sequence (e.g. Floppy drive, cd-rom, HDD, etc...)

If it is still not working then try using your Windows 98 boot disk or a Windows XP CD will also work if you have one available. You can also try hitting F5 during the boot process and it may give you a set of menus that will allow you to get a command line.

Once in a command line you can copy your files to a working disk, run scandisk, HDD monitoring programs etc.

Do you have a PC as well as the laptop? If you do, you can buy special convertors to run a laptop hard disk inside a PC - should be under a tenner if you can find one on http://www.qxl.co.uk or Fleabay (I got mine from my trade supplier so I don't whether you'd find one easily in the shops).

After trying the things that Steve has suggested, that's my next route for finding out whether a hard disk really is dead or whether it's a problem with the laptop. If you can read from it when it's running as the second hard disk inside a PC, then you can copy all of the files off onto a new drive if that's what you want to do. Of course, if you can read from the hard disk in a PC, then it probably means your laptop is stuffed anyway so there's not much point buying a new disk !!

Thanks for the help guys. Just a couple points to note:

1. The harddisk tha's giving the problem is from the PC not the laptop. The one in the laptop is fine just "small" in memeory size. Does the converter work from PC to Laptop?

2. The PC does detect it on bootup, after that it gives me the "No bootdisk...." error message. I'll give the suggestions another shot and see if I can get some joy. If there are anyother suggetions please let me know.

Thanks

Chris

Oh I see. If your PC's hard disk is being detected correctly by the BIOS, then Steve's suggestion of checking the boot sequence is probably the next step. You might want to make the hard disk the first drive that it tries to boot from in order to see if that helps it boot up properly. If it doesn't, then make the floppy drive the first drive that it tries to boot from as Steve said - save and exit the BIOS, reboot and stick your Win98 startup floppy in again to see if that makes any difference.

If your BIOS really is detecting the hard disk properly, then it sounds like your partitions have disappeared

Did your hard disk just contain a C: drive or were there different partitions (e.g. C: drive, D: drive, E: drive) all on the hard disk?

Thanks for the feed-back. My HDD only had C on it. The problem first started with the system just freezing up. It would hang at any time, just out of the blues. I tried scandisk, defrag, but no joy then one morning it just wouldn't boot anymore. I have tried changing the sequence of booting, but I haven't had any joy yet. I'll try out the other suggestions then get back to you.

Do you recall whether Scandisk ever reported any "bad sectors"? That would be the big clue to suggest a failing hard disk that's about to pack up, never to return.

Hi

Yes scandisk did report some "bad sectors" once, but the number was very small and didn't increase up until the HDD stopped booting.