Uncreative Labs

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I hope you can help me because my computer will not boot dos up sucessfully. the problem that i cant finish starting dos unless I use the F5
key and sometimes that dont work. Another problem is that i cant boot from some floppys. My hard drive controller is a promise eidemax 2 with onboard bios and theres a kouwell kw-556f in there. I have feeling its ether a bad controller card or there a conflict.

Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:16 pm

Try this:

Code:

move config.sys config.old
move autoexec.bat autoexec.old

Restart.

See if it boots ok. (Pressing F5 I think bypasses the startup config files like you're doing here.)

If that works, start commenting out each line (especially the device= lines in config.sys) in the config.sys and autoexec.bat. You might have something bad or corrupted.

As for not being able to boot off some floppies, I think for the moment it's a good idea to treat that as a different problem. Remember, they must be system disks to be bootable. Merely having command.com, io.sys and msdos.sys is not enough.

Also, it's possible that the floppies failed. Happens to old magnetic media, unfortunately.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

Its not the disk because these are new floppys and they are system disk because I used the sys c: a: command and the harddrive does boot fine on other computers. when i restart my computer it say 601 - Disk Controller Failure and 162 - System Options Not Set and some times 101 - I/O ROM Error. The kw-556f controls the floppy drives and the eidemax II controls the second ide port and it bios controls the mb ide port.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I replace the kw-556f with two other cards and I still have the problem. this must mean the eidemax II is not working right. I changed the harddrive controller settings but I still have the problem. I can't afford a new card so I hope that its fixable.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

system just won't boot:
reset cmos to the default settings either bios or setup defaults.
this used to happen with some older mb,
but you can get into setup.

make another boot disk and test it on another pc
take the extra time to format the floppy
NOT just sys it. ( format a: /s )

NO hard drive bootup"
if it's the hard disk run fdisk and see if the partition is active, if it reports that make it active with fdisk

the drive could have come from a compaq and have a NON-DOS partition,
these drives will not boot on NORMAL pc's
delpart is a good tool to remove all kinds of odd/unwanted partitions ( easily found on the www)

sometimes a floppy drive gets dirty and will not work.

I have gone nuts trying to get a floppy drive to boot a system
usually the led will stay on if the cable is reversesd.
a bad or dirty floppy drive can cause a good/just tested floppy disk to become corrupted.
when dos 6.22 is installed and windows 3.1 later
there is a comflick with, i believ smartdrv. it can be found in both config.sys ( from windows) and in autoexec.bat ( from dos) the one from dod is newer use it and delete the one in config.sys

installing dos 6.22.
dod 6.22 requires they the disks esp 2 and 3 have a proper volume label. disk 1, disk 2 and disk 3
spacing of disks and especially 2 is critical it must be as long as possible.

do this type label ( space space many times ) 1 count the spaces it must be ( is it 11? ) if it does not TAKE it,
reduse the total lenght of the label disk,,,,,,1 ( commas represent spaces) dopey thing but true.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Sounds like your battery is dead.

You will need to enter the bios as WDgroote says and setup the date, drives, etc.

Then you can deal with other issues that may arise

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

The battery is still storing the setup information and is still keeping time.
I also fixed the 601 - Disk Controller Failure problem, it was defective floppy controller and was replaced with a winbond multi I/O card.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

my problem was usually some kind of " invisible" corruption that was fixed by setting cmos to defautl settings.
old cards do die.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

found what was causing dos not to boot up, the second harddrive was extremly messed up. the boot sector were completly corupted so fdisk gave me the "error reading fixed disk" message.

I still have a little problem. How the heck do you clear the setup information on computer that uses the ds1287 chip and uses a setup disk to chage the bios settings? When I use the setup disk it will give me a menu that says setup,inspect and test, when I select any option, the computer would try to load the program and then it would lock up, the computer cant restart using ctrl+alt+del and keyboard lights stop responding.
is it possible just to take out the ds1287 and then set the computer to its
factory setup?

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I hate the ds1287. there a pain in the to use because of te built in battery. When the battery is good its hard to clear the cmos and when there dead it hard to rewire them to use and external battery pack but i done before on an old magnavox laptop. Dose anyone have a clue on how to clear the ds1287 that has a good battery? Sad

Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 47 Location: London, England

Try shorting the two connections on the battery, it worked for me Smile

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

What conections, far as i know the ds1287 battery is sealed up and the only way to get in there to short it out is to grind the side of thw ds1287 where pin 16 and 20 would be. I realy dont want to grind up a working ds1287.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I just grinded the side down and hooked up an external battery and its still has some of the setup information? Confused

Is it posisble tthat the information is stored elsewere and does any know where I can get a setup disk for an old compaq deskpro, I have found a few at work that didn't work and would lock up the system badly.

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:01 am

HP owns Compaq now, so you might want to try HP's website.

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:39 pm

Will any of these work ? in that case I have 720k disk

Quote:

COMPAQ Portable, COMPAQ DESKPRO, COMPAQ DESKPRO 286
COMPAQ PORTABLE 286, COMPAQ PORTABLE II
COMPAQ PORTABLE III, COMPAQ PORTABLE 386
COMPAQ DESKPRO 386, COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/20, COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/25
COMPAQ SLT/286, COMPAQ LTE, COMPAQ LTE/286
COMPAQ DESKPRO 286e, COMPAQ DESKPRO 286n