Introduction First off, don’t panic., Good., Home , It’s going to be OK.

416-621-9348 CGreaves@ChrisGreaves.com
Home	Tweet

My Computer Won’t Boot, I’ve Lost My Hard Drive.

No you haven’t, and yes it will.

First off, don’t panic. Your hard drive is still there; so too, most likely, is all your data. It’s like peek-a-boo with Mother – just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Check that you haven’t left a floppy diskette in the drive. That’s the most common cause of the “Non-system disk” error message.

If you have an emergency boot diskette, now would be a good time to use it. Power off, insert the diskette and power on. If you hear/see the floppy disk being accessed and your screen has comforting DOS-like messages, relax. It’s going to be OK. If your floppy disk does NOT get accessed, check out the lesson on “CMOS changes”.

Once your machine has booted from the floppy disk, it will probably sit with a blinking DOS prompt saying “C:\Windows>” or similar. Good.

Try the DOS DIR (directory) command to see what’s there:

DIR C:\ /W

If it all goes by too quickly, use the Pause switch:

DIR C:\ /W /P

If your hard drive is partitioned, examine all drive letters, starting with C:, D:, E; and so on, until the system says “Invalid drive specification” or similar

DIR D:\ /W /P

DIR E:\ /W /P

Etc,

If you recognize some of the directory folders, relax a bit more.

If there is a hyper-critical report (spreadsheet or document) that you absolutely must complete before the end of the work day, find it and copy it to diskette and use another computer. We’ll work on this computer later.

Here’s how I found my priceless document on hardware problems (“HardwareProblems.doc”)

DIR C:\hardware*.* /S

If it all goes by too quickly, use the Pause switch:

DIR C:\hardware*.* /S /P

Make a note of the folder path, place a newly-formatted diskette in your floppy drive, and copy your document to floppy diskette:

COPY \greaves\products\corre\hardwareproblems\hardware*.* A:

Relax.

What happens if you try to load Windows from the DOS prompt?

WIN

Toronto and Mississauga, Tuesday, August 30, 2011 9:47 PM