Need Assistance
One of my primary machines (and a nice Folder at that) powered off by itself this PM. It is a ASUS A7N8X, with an Athlon XP 2800+ (running at 2100), with two small hard drives (HD1 is 20 GB, and has 3 partitions: C: win98SE at 2GB (never would boot), E: win2k sp4 at 2 GB (boots better now I have established a separate paging partition on 2nd HD), and F: XP SP2 with 10 GB. 2nd HD has 2 partitions: P: (paging for w2k and xp, at 6GB), and D: generic storage at 20GB.Now, the HD's are all formatted as FAT32, since I originally thought I could multi-boot win98, along with 2k and xp; well it's been running for months now with a dead win98 (crazy memory error if you try to boot it, so I just don't as I don't understand the memory error), and win2k and xp have been running just fine until this PM.
Background, yesterday I loaded OSL2000 thinking it would be a better way to manage the multi-boot situation, wrong; it loaded and pointed to all sorts of partitions, but would only boot to 98's, which then did its usual and offered up its multi-boot selection, so I could select 2k or xp whichever I wanted. Seemed to be harmless, so I ran with it (I did make a undo diskette when I loaded OSL2000).
When I tried to boot the machine this PM after its shutdown it would do nothing; I attempted a 98 boot disk and it would boot to DOS. So, I thought I should remove the OSL2000 bootloader which never did its thing from the start (and I now believe it was because of my ignorance of the interrelationship amoung: mbr's, OS's, and a bootloader). I ran the uninstall OSL2000 using DOS and the undo diskette; however, still no 98 boot screen. What is even worse is that I'm not even able to get into the BIOS, holding down the del key to enter just brings up a blank screen with a blinking cursor, plus the POST is much faster than usual, it seems to be skipping somethings??? I've not been into the BIOS for a couple of weeks, so I can't understand this at all.
I really do not want to have to reload the OS's and software (and, of course no backups). So, I am in a jam, which I believe is somewhat of my own making. If I only better understood mbr's and how each OS manages the mbr I don't think I'd be in this situation. Well, I'm asking for your suggestions.
I'm turning off to bed now (1:50AM my time and I've been trying to fix this all evening). So, I'll check in the AM and hopefully one of you more experienced individuals will be able to help pull me out of this, and suggest a better setup for the long haul. I'd appreciate any and all suggestions (I also need to get this thing up and Folding again 10k is not too far away and -2.1 GBs hurts when it's not cranking and contributing), thanks.
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But before we go there, you might try Memtest to eliminate the possibility of having a bad memory card. Download the image for the media you want to boot with and put the blank disk into a drive of a working machine. Run the utility and it will automatically make the disk for you. Boot with it and just let it run for a full pass or two. IF it detects an error and you have more than one memory board test them one at a time until you ID the bogus board and replace it.
Let's start here. Others may climb in with some dandy things to try before we go drastic. One other thing might be swapping out your power supply with one of equal or better rating to just to make sure you have no issues there too.
Unfortunately, I'm unfamiliar with OSL2000. However, I am familiar with FAT32 and it's OSs- and it's not been very forgiving to me. I hope someone will have some better ideas than I might.
Hope that helps- at least narrow it down.
Hi Qeldroma,
Thanks for replying to my post, frankly I'd thought it had been lost; so much for emergency assistance or perhaps my title should have been more explicit (I'd appreciate your suggestions). To reply to your questions:
1. ASUS A7N8X - UAY (whatever that means), I believe it's just the plain Jane base A7N8X mobo,
2. I have 3 ULT30215 512k, PC3200 400MHz for memory, and,
3. I have a ATNG 350W PS.
I've run memtest for a full cycle and a half with zero errors. I tested the PS with my electronic PS tester and all is OK. Frankly, I do believe it has to do with my loading the OSL2000, on top of the WIN98SE boot sector (but maybe not, see below). I've since removed it using DOS and its undo disk I created when I loaded the OSL2000. However, even after that I get the blank screens on both the BOOT screen (it just hangs there after saying "no bootable CDROM media"), my boot sequence is: FD, CDROM, then HD0. It also will not access BIOS/CMOS (F2) which puzzles me the most, as the option presents itself during POST, but if I hold down F2 it just goes to a blank screen with the cursor blinking in the top LH corner.
However, one step at a time. I'd appreciate any suggestions. Again, I have the c: drive partitioned into three partitions (when I look at them in fdisk it displays odd characters for the partition names and the format shows up as "F@T32"); the partitions: 1st 2GB WIN98SE C:, 2nd 2 GB W2KSP4 E:, 3rd 12GB WXPSP2; there is a second HD which has 2 partitions: 1st 5GB paging P:, and 2nd 35 GB general storage as D.
Now that I'm thinking about it, this problem seems to have started shortly after I created the paging partition P: on the 2nd HD, and changed all of the pointers on the virtual memory settings for both W2K and XP to point to P: for their paging files. I created P: as the first partition on the 2nd drive to maximize performance and formatted it as FAT32. I do not know if that has anything to do with the situation; however, it just jumped into my mind, as I'd been living with using OSL2000 to boot to WIN98 and then using the WIN98 boot selection for either W2k or XP. I'd appreciate any assistance (as usual), thank you very much s for replying to my request for help.
hbi
Perhaps a more concise description of the most immediate problem to deal with might garner more response? A long description may hide the most pressing detail and sometimes just a basic description of your system with the problem that must be handled first is enough to get us started.
Like you said, first things first. Unless someone else has a better guess it sounds to me like your BIOS is jumped. I would suggest that if you have any data files and profiles you want to back-up off that drive (if you haven't done so already) you do so now. You may remove the drive and slave it to another machine and copy them off if you have to.
IF you have saved your last BIOS image, you can try to flash your BIOS to restore it using the AWDFLASH.exe utiltiy mentioned in chapter EDIT: 2 :EDIT of your user's manual. You can also try with a download image from ASUS, but the corruption may be in the settings. Should you need to, chapters EDIT: 2 and 1 :EDIT also covers resetting the BIOS and clearing the CMOS. Follow carefully. If you're still stuck, post back- there is still hope.
Again, sorry. I do this as a volunteer and can't be available as much as even I would like- and this week on the radar doesn't look much better. Please be patient, many of us are just simply volunteers and I sincerely thank you for the support you've afforded us folding. I'm convinced it will make a difference someday ... hopefully someday soon.
Hope this helps
Qel
Now as for the booting scenario. If you can boot off a floppy, boot with the win98 floppy and then do fdisk /mbr from the a: prompt. This will delete your master boot record. It will the boot to whatever OS is actually flagged as the boot partition for that drive, this may be win98 I don't know as you could have seriously screwed things up with the way you have your drive partitioned. But you may luck out and the win2k boot loader may be set to primary which is what win2k (or xp) like to do.
I would then fdisk and blow away your win98 partition leaving just the 2k and xp. At this point it should boot into one of the other OS's. If not there is one more step to take. Boot up with a winxp cd. On the first screen don't choose recovery console. Instead tell it you want to install windows. At this point it's going to scan your drive and look for other versions of Windows - it should find both your 2k partition and your XP partition if they are healthy.
At this point when you select one of those partitions it will do a repair install. This should replace any damaged boot loaders that you have and allow you to boot into your copy of XP. As it does it's thing it will look like it's doing a new install, but don't worry. All your data and programs will be fine. All it's doing is replacing core system files.
Once XP is up and running you can use the drive tools and boot information to add a seperate boot record for 2k. Personally I'd get rid of 2k entirely as there is no need to dual boot 2k and XP.
BIOS information is also discussed in Chapter 2 of the User's Manual for the Basic board (sorry- I mistakenly used my Deluxe book which has this in chapter 4- I've editted my previous post).
Again, hope this helps