[2Craftycat]

Hi there,
Hoping someone can help me with this. I've looked to see if I could figure this out myself, but nothing quite works.

When we started the computer today it wouldn't boot up. It had been working without problems before this.
It gets to the screen that shows the BIOS information, and then brings up the line detecting for IDE drives...for at least 15+ minutes. The Bottom of this screen says: Press DEL to enter SETUP. Pressing the Delete key seems to do nothing. Finally the screen changes to showing Pri. Master disk, Pri. Slave disk, etc., PCI devices., Boot from CD, then the line DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. Nothing happens.
I have the Recovery disks that came with the computer and have tried to use them. I've inserted it now after getting the disk boot failure, and also restarted the computer and inserted it then. The computer screen shows the recovery disk info (Oak Technologies) CD-ROM drivers, then very quickly says there are not enough letter drives and changes to the DOS A: prompt.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

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Hi 2Craftycat...

Is this on a Windows ME or Windows 98 machine?

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

Hi 2Craftycat...

Is this on a Windows ME or Windows 98 machine?

wannabe1

[Neil Jones]

Sound's like a hard drive problem (it sounds like it might be dead). It shouldn't hang for 15 minutes on Detecting IDE Drives.

[Adrenalin]

Yeah i would say hard drive to, maybe check the IDE calbes are all the way in etc.

[ViprXX]

if your comfortable opening the computer then open it and make sure the ide cable is securely connected to the hard drive and other end to the motherboard and check the power to the hard drive. also, try to keep tapping the DEL key after it's done detecting ide and moves on to the pri master. if you can get into the bios try setting it to defaults.