Deskpro EN refuses to boot from hard disk

Hi,

I work for a non profit association and we were given two Compaq PC's by a
company: one PIII 450MHz Deskpro, and one PIII 866MHz Deskpro EN (with no
documentation nor software on floppy/CD ROM). I have no idea of what is
installed on their disks.

Both PC refuse to boot from the hard drive with the same message: "non
system disk or disk error"

I 've checked the Compaq Setup with F10, everything seems OK (including HDD
setup)

I tried booting from DOS or Windows XP floppy disks and then strangely, I
can't see any C: hard disk from there...

Help !!! What am I supposed to do?

TIA!

Xavier

My guess is that the hard drives have been wiped clean and you get the message
because there is no operating system installed. If the drives are not
partitioned, then a DOS or Windows bootable floppy will not see a C: drive
partition.

You need to start from scratch, partition and format the drives and install an
operating system... Ben Myers

On Sun, 7 Oct 2007 11:48:59 +0200, "Xavier M." <NOSPAMxamafr@free.fr> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I work for a non profit association and we were given two Compaq PC's by a
>company: one PIII 450MHz Deskpro, and one PIII 866MHz Deskpro EN (with no
>documentation nor software on floppy/CD ROM). I have no idea of what is
>installed on their disks.
>
>Both PC refuse to boot from the hard drive with the same message: "non
>system disk or disk error"
>
>I 've checked the Compaq Setup with F10, everything seems OK (including HDD
>setup)
>
>I tried booting from DOS or Windows XP floppy disks and then strangely, I
>can't see any C: hard disk from there...
>
>Help !!! What am I supposed to do?
>
>TIA!
>
>Xavier
>

"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@charter.net> a écrit dans le message de
news: 4kihg3drhgd7anke9sf8ok39a9ok5dns88@4ax.com...
> My guess is that the hard drives have been wiped clean and you get the
> message
> because there is no operating system installed. If the drives are not
> partitioned, then a DOS or Windows bootable floppy will not see a C: drive
> partition.
>
> You need to start from scratch, partition and format the drives and
> install an
> operating system... Ben Myers

Thanks for your advice! I expected to see even a non partitioned HDD, so
maybe I'm wrong.

Strangely, I remember tried to boot from floppy on one of our working
Deskpro PCs (with Windows XP working fine) and there same thing, I could not
see disk C: ! Maybe I made a mistake?...

I also used the old MS-DOS utility MSD on the non-booting PC, same thing: it
reported no hard drive.

Anyway thanks, I'll try tomorrow with the FDISK partitioning utility...

Xavier

"Xavier M." <NOSPAMxamafr@free.fr> a écrit dans le message de news:
47093db8$0$8896$426a74cc@news.free.fr...
>
> "Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@charter.net> a écrit dans le message de
> news: 4kihg3drhgd7anke9sf8ok39a9ok5dns88@4ax.com...
>> My guess is that the hard drives have been wiped clean and you get the
>> message
>> because there is no operating system installed. If the drives are not
>> partitioned, then a DOS or Windows bootable floppy will not see a C:
>> drive
>> partition.
>>
>> You need to start from scratch, partition and format the drives and
>> install an
>> operating system... Ben Myers
>
> Thanks for your advice! I expected to see even a non partitioned HDD, so
> maybe I'm wrong.
>
> Strangely, I remember tried to boot from floppy on one of our working
> Deskpro PCs (with Windows XP working fine) and there same thing, I could
> not see disk C: ! Maybe I made a mistake?...
>
> I also used the old MS-DOS utility MSD on the non-booting PC, same thing:
> it reported no hard drive.
>
> Anyway thanks, I'll try tomorrow with the FDISK partitioning utility...
>
> Xavier
>

Stupid question maybe :
did you check if there is a HDD in ?

t'as regardé si il y avait un disque dur dans le boitier ?
il est peut être mort
regarde ce que le bios détecte ou bien
essaye d'installer xp en bootant sur le cd 'nouvelle installation' et laisse
le détecter le
disque dur
tu peux quitter après sans rien changer ...
Jean-Marc

"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@charter.net> a écrit dans le message de
news: 4kihg3drhgd7anke9sf8ok39a9ok5dns88@4ax.com...
> My guess is that the hard drives have been wiped clean and you get the
> message
> because there is no operating system installed. If the drives are not
> partitioned, then a DOS or Windows bootable floppy will not see a C: drive
> partition.
>
> You need to start from scratch, partition and format the drives and
> install an
> operating system... Ben Myers
>

Yep, you were right: with FDISK I was able to see the disk, there was no
partition on it.

Thanks again,

Xavier

"lefourbe" <fauxlefourbe@free.fr> a écrit dans le message de news:
4709c97a$0$30943$426a34cc@news.free.fr...

> t'as regardé si il y avait un disque dur dans le boitier ?

Oui, le disque dur est bien là! :-)

> il est peut être mort
> regarde ce que le bios détecte ou bien
> essaye d'installer xp en bootant sur le cd 'nouvelle installation' et
> laisse le détecter le
> disque dur
> tu peux quitter après sans rien changer ...

Avec FDISK j'ai pu enfin voir le disque, sans aucune partition dessus. Faut
croire qu'ils ont fait le grand ménage par le vide avant de nous refiler les
PC.

Bon, faudra faire une install complète...

Merci!

Xavier