Off topic, but a decent question...

From: jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca <(jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca)>
Date: Wed Feb 11 14:53:38 1998

> We just gave a teacher a Magnavox Headstart 486SX PC. It has a large
> yellow sticker on the back that reads "DO NOT FORMAT THE HARDDISK". So
> what do you think he did? :-) Tried upgrading DOS. (5.0 > 6.2)
> Dos says, "Wanna format the harddisk?" User says "OK, Whatever..."
> Now we have a dead PC. It will boot off the floppy, it will do dir C:, but
> it refuses to boot from the harddisk. I'm thinking they hid something
> proprietary in the bootsector. Anyone else know anything? We have no docs
> for it, but there's another PC like it in the building somewhere, I have to
> go find it... Would it fix my problem if I were to get the partition
> table off the other (good) machine and write it to this one, would that fix it?
> We already laplinked it to another Magnavox Headstart and tried transferring
> everything back, that finished OK but still won't boot. I'm getting ready to
> hand the guy a bootdisk and say "Here, you have to boot from that..."
> -------

Do:

(with the bootable dos 6.2 and booted and at a: prompt)

fdisk /mbr
and sys c: to be sure.

Then see how it turns out.

Jason D.
email: jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
Received on Wed Feb 11 1998 - 14:53:38 GMT