Yet another computer HELP question.

[Joe Tonich]

On my sons's computer at startup a screen come up saying:

Data error reading Drive C

Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?

Any key I hit the Abort, etc... line just reproduces and I end up with a screen full of them. The computer is running win/98 if this helps.

Any ideas?

Joe

[Don Abele]

Joe, there are several things that can cause this (in worsening order):

1. Loose connection (from motherboard to hard drive):
Open the case and unseat, then reseat the connector cable - they can work loose.

2. Bad connector cable:
Try swapping the cable with another one.

3. Dead hard drive:
Find out what the manufacturer is of the hard drive and download their diagnostics program and run it.

4. Dead controller on motherboard:
Try connection the hard drive cable into the secondary controller on the motherboard.

Not sure what your comfort level is for all this, so a visit to computer repair place may be in order. If it's the hard drive, check with the manufacturer, many have really good replacement warranties (even if they are beyond the actual date).

Hope this helps, be well,

Doc

[Chuck Wintle]

Try to boot up with the Win98 boot disk. If you can access the c drive it may be only a corrupt boot file.