grogger13

I accidentally zero filled my Maxtor hard drive with a Seagate diagnostic and utilities disk. Now my computer won't boot from the cd-rom with certain disks. I had to use the XP boot disks to get windows installed, but now when it starts up it gives me an error about files missing. The maxtor diaganostic disk wont boot.

Is there something that the harddrive is missing that i didn't do after the zero fill.

I have no idea why this is happening so i'm not even sure what specifics to give.

Its a dell 4100, 1Ghz pentium 3, with 512 ram. It has a dvd-rom and a cd-rw on one ide cable, and the maxtor 40GB harddrive formatted in FAT32 on the onther ide cable.

what i can't understand is why would a harddrive problem affect the way the cpu boots disks?

stirling

what's the boot order in the BIOS?

petercj

I've never had this problem, but I would suggest starting again and see where things lead.

I would try a generic disc utility to see if the drive can be cleared and set to a usable state, such as:-

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

Then try the Maxtor diagnostic utility again - if you haven't used this particular copy of the Maxtor software previously, I would download a fresh copy onto a new floppy, checking that it is the correct edition/version.

If you have set the boot order in the BIOS to boot from CD, make sure its back to the previous setting.

Why are you using FAT32?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/100108/

stirling

Petercj - Hi

where I was going was:

taking grogger13's last question first.
Even though grogger13 says "certain disks won't boot" I'm guessing that the only bootable disk he's tried since rebuild is the diag disk, i.e. it's not that "certain disks" won't boot it's NO disks will boot. I'm also guessing that the boot sequence is set to .. HD, CD .. (grogger13, am I right?)

So grogger13, when you had no OS on the HD the (XP) CD would be the boot media chosen by the BIOS. However now you have an OS (of sorts) on HD the CD will not get a look-in. So you'd have to change the boot sequence to .. CD, HD .. to get the (any) CD to boot.

Now to the problem of the missing OS files. After the original problem with the diag disk I'm (again) guessing that the formatting was messed up enough for XP to notice but not enough for the XP install to notice. did you force a reformat during the build?

I'd agree with Petercj - why are you using FAT32?

Given that you're getting problems right at the start, rather than mess with diags I'd do a total rebuild making sure you force a complete re-format (remember to set boot sequence to CD before HD and keep an eye out during install for when to take the CD out, otherwise (sometimes) you can end up in a loop!)

grogger13

first off, my boot sequence goes 1 floppy->2 cd-rom->3 hdd so it isn't that.

It will only boot the seagate utilities disk and occasionally the windows xp install disk.
I really cant understand it.

petercj

Is the Maxtor diagnostic program on a floppy or a CD?

To boot the XP disc you need to change the boot order so that 'boot from CD' is the first in the sequence - you might be able to access such an option by holding down your f11 key from start, which will save the need to change the boot order.

If you haven't already, I would suggest you download the Maxtor diagnostic program to your desktop and then on to a new floppy - then start your computer with the floppy in the drive.

grogger13

the maxtor diagnostic utility was like 78MB, is there another version for floppy

petercj

Try this one:-

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22