My hard drive, running W98, got scrambled, so I tried to boot into DOS from the floppy; this worked once but the second time got Disk error - replace disk and try again, or some such.

Trusty Knoppix live CD to the rescue: this confirmed that HD0 was unreadable, HD1 was OK, and to my surprise, it also displayed the contents of the floppy disk, and I was able to read the README file on it.

Tried to boot from FD again - this time it got to the A> prompt and wouldn't do anything after that. I tried everything I could think of: different boot disks (none worked at all), using the disk in another machine, where it booted fine. Stoopidly, I replaced the cable, although it looked OK; the replacement cable didn't work at all, so I put back the old one and got the original error. Knoppix could still read the diskette. Then I realised I was an idiot because if Knoppix could read it then surely it wasn't a hardware fault anyway.

So I'm left with the question: why will it not boot from the floppy when Knoppix can read it?

I know that PCs are supplied now without floppy drives - my laptop is like that - but I still find them useful.

Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks.

May be a stupid question my computer is new in my BIOS setup the option Seek floppy at boot is off
You do not turn this option by accident in you re BIOS on off


all the best

Thank you for replying so quickly. I will check this of course, but

(a) it is complaining about not finding the floppy - maybe I didn't mention that
(b) it is not a new machine
(c) it did work once, and then half worked, then didn't work at all.

Of course maybe it is just dying ....

But you could still be right. I'll check and let you know.

Thanks again.

Hello again, Ronlau9.

I did check the floppy seek, and it was OK.

I've been trying a few more things, mostly booting from various disks, and I find that if my DOS boot does not include my second optical drive, it works. Also going back to Knoppix, it is not seeing the second drive either, although CMOS does. Of course, as Knoppix is a live CD, part of a cover DVD, it may not even be looking for it - there's only so much you can put on these things.

So it now looks as if the culprit may be the CDRW drive or its controller. Since I can now get into DOS, I will try to mend the HD and take it from there. Obviously this is moving well away from linux, so I will close this thread, and maybe surface on a more appropriate forum.

Thank you for your interest.

Edna