"Simon O'Connor" wrote in message
u...
Hi again,

I've got more information now... I've been playing around with things
as per
the suggestions of these who have kindly posted replies, and it's
still not
working. I've now tried the drive on the other IDE channel with
nothing else
plugged in, tried just the floppy drive (I can't boot off that
either), and
also just tried a CD runnable version of Linux called Knoppix... this
boots
and runs fine on my computer, but it isn't working on this one at
all... So
I really don't know what's going on... if my friend can find the
receipt for
the motherboard, then I'll get it replaced, and post what's found to
be the
problem.

If anyone does have any further ideas though, it'd be much
appreciated!

Simon



I might've missed it but did not see mention if you had tried booting
into DOS. Not booting into Windows and then using a DOS shell or by
exiting Windows back into DOS. Just booting straight into DOS real
mode. For Windows 9x, you can hit, I think, F5 or F8 to get a menu and
then select to boot into DOS (and without loading anything in config.sys
and autoexec.bat). Otherwise, use a DOS bootable floppy (and rename
config.sys and autoexec.bat so nothing in them gets loaded). Can you
see your drive now?

Have you tried booting into DOS and then ran the setup.exe to install
Windows to see if it then detects the hard drive okay? I'm wondering if
the MBR (master boot record) might be fouled up or infected. From a DOS
bootable floppy that has the FDISK program on it, run:

fdisk /mbr

to replace the MBR with the one from Microsoft. By booting up without a
diskette in the floppy drive (and assuming the BIOS is configured to
look at A: before C: for a boot drive), you do not load whatever might
be in the MBR on the hard drive.

Another thought is that you say that you format the drive on one host
and then move it to another. The drive geometry used by the BIOS in one
machine may not be the same translation geometry recognized and used by
another. Sometimes you can move a drive without incident, sometimes
not. If you can boot into DOS real mode using a bootable floppy, and if
the drive is recognized as existing under that instance of DOS, then try
using FORMAT on the host in which the drive is to be used.