Hey people,
I would like to know how I can fix a problem with my HDD or software. I have a 30GB HDD on a 400MHz x86 Processor. Recently I had Windows installed on it (we all know how insecure it is). Well... I had my anti-virus software disabled because I did not configure it (msconfig) to start at boot time. I forgot to re-enable it, heh. I opened up the file mIRC.exe (I was going to install mIRC client) and all-of-a-sudden, my computer restarted. Weird I thought to myself and the next thing on my screen were 2 lines.

Non-System disk or disk error
replace and strike any key when ready

I did not know what to do. So I took my Windows XP Professional Disk out and it did not want to work. So I asked my friend and he recommened me to use linux because it is much more reliable. I agreed. So I downloaded Slackware 9.0 from my friends system. I put it in and it booted up fine.

Then I put the command in " cfdisk ". It gave me this output.

FATAL ERROR: Cannot open disk drive
Press any key to exit cfdisk

Even more upset with this huge problem... I asked my friend again that it didn't want to install and it gave me the "FATAL ERROR..." He said the partition was corrupt so I use the " dd " command.

root@slackware:/# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
dd: /dev/hda: No such device or address

It did not work.. my friend told me it should work

Now I am depending on you Linux Geniuses to help me out please I am very desperate and any help with be very helpful. Thank you all you wonderful people .

Sincerely,
Abid Kazmi

Does your BIOS recognise your system at boot?

Non-System disk or disk error
replace and strike any key when ready

This means the PC could not find a bootable drive. If the BIOS does not detect the drive on boot I suspect it has crashed.

I'm not sure if this suggestion will help but you could try the Knoppix bootable CD its a full Linux Distro that runs from CD and it may help to diagnose any HDD problems

Thank you all soo much. I do have the Knoppix CD and I will try it today. Yes, the BIOS does recognize my system at boot time. So I guess it did crash. Thank you all =)

Hello,
Well I had downloaded Knoppix and put it into my CD-ROM drive. It did not boot up. It still gave me the error:

Non-System disk or disk error
replace and strike any key when ready

I asked my friend and he said that it was for Windows FAT FS and/or NTFS FS, heh. So I wanted to know If I downloaded the Wrong Version Of Knoppix =/.

I got the .iso 726,974,464 KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-07-25-EN.iso from
ftp://raven.cslab.vt.edu/pub/linux/knoppix/

Thank you for all your help =)
Sincerely,
Abid Kazmi

Is your BIOS set to boot from CDROM? 1st boot device floppy 2nd decice CDROM then third device IDE-0 or something similar

Hello again,
I am not too sure about my BIOS. I think it is from the CD-ROM because I had put in a Slackware and also a WinXP disc in the CDROM and they came up on the screen. Meaning the instructions but both of them kept saying CANNOT READ DISK DRIVE. By the way.. today I tried the Slackware CD again. I looked closely and lots of stuff came up... It said something like:

Drive Status {Not Ready} 0x50
Drive Error {Not Ready} 0x50
Drive Status {Not Ready} 0x50
Drive Error {Not Ready} 0x50
Drive Status {Not Ready} 0x50
Drive Error {Not Ready} 0x50

I believe it was something similar to that.

Thank you for all your help =)
Sincerely,
Abid Kazmi

Excuse My ignorance... but shouldn't you use /dec/hda1?? you want to dd the partition.... right

Hey,
Hehe, anything accepted. I'm just here for help =).
Well... I don't want to do specific things. I just need to get my computer up anyway possible. The file corrupted everything I guess... so I was thinking of cleaning up everything.

I did try your help Ciccio, I put in:

root@slackware:/# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1
dd: /dev/hda1: No space left on device

Any suggesstions?

Thank you,
Sincerely,
Abid Kazmi

can't you mount /dev/hda1¡¡¡ Can't you format /dev/hda1? if you can't even format /dev/hda1, then probably it's problem is phisical.

Hello Ciccio,
No as a matter of fact, I did try to format /dev/hda1 in this format:

root@slackware:/# mount /dev/hda1
mount: can't find /dev/hda1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

So I wondered. I simply typed in mount and got this:

root@slackware:/# mount
/dev/fd2 on / type ext2 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)

Thank you,
Sincerely,
Abid Kazmi

I am sorry, I meant I tried to MOUNT it not format it. I did try to format it by doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda. Is that the proper way of formating?

Thank you,
Sincerely,
Abid Kazmi

Using /dev/zero will wipeout everything on the drive. To format you need to use (example for ext3):

mke2fs -j /dev/hda1

See man pages mkfs for more details.

The command fdisk -l /dev/hda will show how the drive is partitioned.

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows should be the command...