No hard disk recognition---HELP!!

David Clemens dmc at ntcsd1.UUCP
Tue Aug 8 01:35:23 AEST 1989


   Something really strange happened yesterday. But first some background...

   I am working with a PS/2 Model 80 computer running Xenix 386. The system 
has a 115M hard disk of which 20M is in a DOS partition.

   Yesterday, I had to reinstall the Xenix operating system(don't ask why, it 
was my mistake), as well as the drivers for our peripheral equipment(CD-ROM 
drives, Exelan card, and Computone card). Anyway, after installing the 
Computone card first, I rebooted the system to test it before installing the 
rest of the equipment. However, I forgot to take out the disk that had the
computone drivers on it.

   When the computer tried to reboot, it saw the disk in the drive and tried
to boot off of it. This apparently accomplished nothing, but when I took
the disk out and again tried to reboot, the computer came up in IBM BASIC.
(IBM BASIC boots up from memory when a the computer has no other operating
system installed)

   When I use the PS/2 reference disk, it shows the configuration to be the
same as it was before the problem and when I boot off of a DOS disk, I can
still access the DOS partition on the hard disk. Without the DOS floppy,
however, it still boots into BASIC.

   Does anyone out there know what is wrong with this system? It has been 
suggested that something wrote over the boot sectors on the HD, so I backed
up the DOS partition and reinstalled DOS there using the Select command as
if I was installing it for the first time on a new HD. Alas, no dice there.

   Can anyone out there help me?
   Mail me any suggestions, and I'll post the first one that works.

                         Thanx in advance...
                                  David Clemens

Disclaimer: The above ideas were the result of the head-on collision of two
       apparently random thought processes in the lower portion of my brain.
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|  I'm not weird, I'm normal...        | David Clemens                      |
|  The rest of the world is weird.     | {backbone}!mcnc!rti!ntcsd1!dmc     |
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