HELPPPPPP Problem with computer I bought

[cchen]

I bought a used computer, and ever since I got it the computer has been freezing up. Everything seems to be in working order, I tried formatting and resintalling win98 but it still freezes up. TOday, when I tried to fix it again, I get a message saying system disk failure, so I pop in my win98 startup disk and boot to dos. Then I manually try to load windows from within the windows folder and I get an error that says vfat device initialization failed. I'm getting these messages when I didn't even do anything to the computer. Does anyone know the problem here and how to fix it?

 

[Duvie]

Sounds like a harddrive failing...Find the name of the drive and see if the manu offers a utility program (ie maxtor has a good one)...it will run a series of test...

I think you ruled out software after the reinstall....system failure during bootup is using when it trys to access the boot sector of the harddrive.

 

[Bleep]

I agree with duvie, sounds like a Hard Drive failure. Hard Drives have a 3 year warranty so check out the build date on the Drive.
Bleep

 

[Vampire]

Be careful with that statement Bleep. Retail drives may carry a 3 year warranty, but OEM drives are often less. Plus Cchen said it was a used computer.

I just RMAed a retail WD which had a 3 year warranty, but the replacement they sent only has a 90 day. It's only a 4GB, so I'm not really concerned. They did give me the option of using the value (I didn't ask what they considered the value of a 2.5 year old 4GB HD) toward upgrading to a larger drive. Also, if you give them a CC number, they'll ship the new one first, and not charge your CC as long as you return the old one within a certain amount of time.

WD has a pretty sweet web site setup. Use their downloadable diagnostic utility to read your HDs serial number, then you can input that serial number to find out if your HD is still in warranty or not. One warning, the diagnostic utility installed a portion that runs constantly, so I had to manually remove it when I was done testing my HD.

What brand HD is it Cchen?

 

[cchen]

the hd is a quantum bigfoot cy. i still get the same message, so I downloaded quantum's hard drive utility and tested the drive, and the drive passed all the tests. I'm completely dumbfounded....someone help me out here

 

[copyfixer]

If you can get into bios, check around for anything to do with hard drives (size, sectors, cylinders, etc.) Some bios' have a program to do a high level format on a hard drive. This would bring it back to "new condition". If anyone knows of a program for this you might post for cchen. Otherwise I would suspect a virus that got into your boot sector. The only cure would be a high level format or replacement.

 

[Big Lar]

You may want to just try a Scandisc/all from the dos prompt first...

 

[Django]

I had a similar prob with my old 2.1 gb bigfoot cy.. I left it for ded and got a new hd, but I later tried a low level format using a tool from quantum's website. Funny enuf it worked fine after that, but I rarely use it nemore since the machine has some major probs so I can't really say if it is stable.