Disk I/O error. Replace the disk, and then press any key.

get a boot disk from other computer.

At a guess although I am not any real expert on laptops and there problems I would assume at a first glance that the bios has reset itsef and that you might be able to get away with running a harddrive autodetect in the bios (setup).

Running a antivirus is also a good idea prefrably a boot disk with an antivirus on it. There are effective free ones around and I am sure that some of the other experts will be able to give you a site that you can download one on to a floppy disk.

Griffon.

GuGa,

Either your bootsector or hard drive has been wiped or corrupted.  You may try getting a boot disk to see if you can at least access the drive.

www.bootdisk.com

what OS were you running on the laptop?

Here are some links to some recovery software:
easy recovery at
www.ontrack.com

File Rescue 2.5
Web:http://www.file-rescue.com/

GetDataBack
http://www.runtime.org/

For NTFS
http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm

Fast File Undelete
http://www.dtidata.com/

Undelete
http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/undelete.stm

File Recover 2000
http://www.filerecover.com/

R-Tools
http://www.r-tt.com/

Lost and Found
Lost and Found recovers data from drives that have been formatted, lost partitions through accidental deletion, etc. This applies to FAT or FAT32 partitions only. If the disk is still capable of spinning, there is a chance of recovery.
Lost and Found only performs read operations on the affected hard disk. Many utilities attempt to repair the hard disk and corrupt data in the process. Since Lost and Found only performs read operations, it does not risk the integrity of the data on the disk.
http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id160.html

File Restore
If you've deleted your data and you want to get it back, you need FileRestore.
FileRestore is a simple, easy-to-use tool for recovering files that have been lost or deleted from your Windows system.
Designed for Windows XP, 2000, NT, Me, and 9x
http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/filerestore.asp

Disk Commander
In virtually any situation where you need to recover lost data from a Windows system, Disk Commander is the solution. Disk Commander performs a wide range of data recovery operations.
http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/diskcommander.asp

Drive Rescue
Supported file systems: FAT 12/16/32
Windows. 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP
Free
http://home.arcor.de/christian_grau/rescue/index.html

This is a mixed list from various EE'ers...

Some antivirus software links:
Personal Antivirus
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1474&a=26499,00.asp

Ratings range from worst 1 to best 5
AVG 6.0 Professional
    Rating  = 2    
    www.grisoft.com
Command Antivirus  
    Rating  = 2  
    www.commandsoftware.com 
eTrust EZ Armor Suite
    Rating  = 3
    www.my-etrust.com
F-Secure Anti-Virus Personal Edition  
    Rating  = 3  
    www.f-secure.com
Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal  
    Rating  = 3
    www.kaspersky.com
McAfee VirusScan 6.0
    Rating  = 3  
    www.mcafee-at-home.com
Norman Virus Control 5.2  
    Rating  = 3  
    www.norman.com
 Norton AntiVirus 2002
    Rating  = 5  
    www.symantec.com 
 Panda Antivirus Platinum 6.0
    Rating  = 4
    www.pandasecurity.com
 Trend PC-cillin 2002
    Rating  = 3
    www.antivirus.com
------------------------------------

Online Scanners
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1474&a=26557,00.asp

Norton Web Services  
    Rating  = 4  
Go to this page and click on Scan for Viruses
http://security2.norton.com/ssc/vc_about.asp?langid=us&venid=sym&plfid=22&pkj=RKNYPJUIYCZRWEJGSSK

It needs to download a few file so as to activate the scan so you may see a message like this.

"The Scan for Viruses uses an ActiveX program to scan your computer. The download is approximately 1.5MB and can take about 10 minutes over a 28.8 modem.

The scan can take more than 20 minutes depending on the speed of your computer and the number of files that you have. Please do not browse away from this page unless you intend to abort the scan.

Downloading Scan for Viruses controls. Please wait...
 
During the download, you might see one or more messages asking if it is OK to download and run these programs. Click Yes when these messages appear.

Note: Scan for Viruses does not scan compressed files"
======================
Trend Micro HouseCall  
    Rating  = 3
www.housecall.antivirus.com
"Trend Micro's free online virus scanner
In order to better serve our customers, we ask HouseCall users to register before scanning their computer.  By registering, you will receive virus alerts from our team of Virus Doctors. You will be able to unsubscribe when you receive your first email. You can also scan without registering"

Cut from CrazyOne.

Antivirus - try f-prot (via www.bootdisk.com).
But first you need to get your hard drive running....

At startup, press F2, get into BIOS setup. See what the BIOS thinks about your hard drive (first page). If there is no hard drive indicated, you need to get BIOS and diagnostic tools from Dell and run them, to find out if the HD is gone or resurrectable. Resetting BIOS may help, but I think you need some tool for this as I didn't find it as an option in setup.

If the HD is found, boot from a 9X boot floppy, run fdisk and see what info is available on the partitioning. If there are no partitions, the partition info is damaged. It may be recovered by running fdisk /mbr.

Regards
/RID

Verify if your floppy drive is empty !
---
If you can "scan" with a good antivirus your game media on another computer to identify virus.

It's very important to identify virus before action !

---
Can you give us more information about "bios" parameters ?
( harddisk).

The "Primary harddisk 0 failure" means that the system can't properly detect your harddrive.  Go back to the BIOS setup (F2 at power on) and see what it lists for harddisk size.  If its blank or "No drive installed" (or something to that effect), then you have a real problem (but not one I would suspect to be caused by installing a game), like the drive electronics have failed for some reason.  You might try removing the drive from the case (there will be a ~3" wide cover on the left side (right in front of the PCMCIA slots).  Remove the screws (you might need a very fine point screwdriver) then pull the drive out using the grip spots molded into the surface.  It should pull straight out. Do NOT press on the top of the drive.  Then reinsert it and rescrew it in.  Also verify that the screws on the bottom of the laptop are all tightly  screwed in, alot of the Lat. CPi's had problems with loose screws.

If the BIOS detects the drive, then you are in a slightly better position.  The above tools may help.  Or you can try using a Win98SE bootdisk:
http://dos.li5.org/IMGS/WIN98SE.EXE
Run that file with a blank floppy in the computer you're using and it will generate a bootable disk.  Put it in the PC's drive, power on and wait till you get to an A:\ prompt.  Then try these commands, with enter at the end of each line:

c:
dir

If you get an error about invalid drive letter or error reading fixed disk...then you'll really need of of the above utilities.

-dog*

Thank you ALL! Please let me have some time to go through your advices in a couple of days. I think I'll be able to get back to this message board by week-end since that's the only quality time i have to work on my laptop problem.

Dogzlar: I did unscrew my harddrive, took it out, put it back, and did screw it tight. However, Same problem still persists. Let me try referenced tools above in the comments.

Wakeup: I had Win98 OS on this laptop. Although, I tryed to install WinMe afterwords. Nonetheless, it would always show Win98 logo at startup. Thanks for list of link.

Frache: I'll post my 'BIOS' parameters tonight since I don't have that laptop with me at the work.

Thank you all.

GuGa

Hello dear Experts:


My laptop is now detecting harddrive after I pressed "Fn" key and F2.

Next thing I did was I got a win98 setup disk and created virtual drive d: (I think).

So, once I start my laptop it says "Starting Windows 98... " in DOS prompt and ends up showing a: drive.
At that point I type 'd:' and then 'scandisk'. This launches Microsoft ScanDisk.
Once it checks Media descriptor and File allocation table, it gives following statement while checking Directory structure:
"ScanDisk encountered a data error while reading cluster 2.

ScanDisk will try to continue past this error. When ScanDisk offers to perform a surface scan on thius disk, choose Yes."

Once I hit Ok, it just hangs in there and does not do anything else.

Here is some more info on my BIOS:

Page1 Dell Latitude CPi D266XT Setup BIOS Version: A09

Pentium II 266 MHz
Level 2 Cache: 512 Kb
System Memory: 64 MB
Video Controller: NeoMagic 2160
Video Memory: Crystal 4237B

Primary Hard Drive: 4100 MB
Diskette Drive A: Modular Day
Diskette Drive B: Not Installed
Diskette Recofig: Any Time

Modular Bay: Diskette Drive

Page 2:
Boot Configuration
Boot First Drive: Diskette Drive
Boot Second Drive: Internal HDD
Boot Third Drive: CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive

Boot POST: Minimal
Boot Speed: 266 MHz

Dock Configuration
Docking Status: Undocked
Docking Ethernet: Enabled
Docking IRQ: Optimized
Universal Connect: Enabled

Page 3
Basic Device Configuration
Serial Port: COM1
Infrared Data Port: Disabled

Parallel Mode: ECP
Audio Mode: Half Duplex

Click Volume
Keyboard Click: disabled

Num Lock; Disabled
External Hot KEy: Scroll Lock

Pointing Device: Touch Pad PS/2 Mouse

Primary Video: Dock Video Card

Page 4
Battary charging

Page 5
Brightness:
Power Management: Enabled
Smart CPU Mode: Enabled
Ring/Event Resume: Enable
etc...

I have tried to run fdisk from d: prompt but I have following screen:

"Your computer has a disk larger than 512 MB. This version of Windows includes inproved support for large disks, resulting in more efficient use of disk space on large drives, and allowing disks over 2 GB to be formatted as a single drive.

Important: If you enable large disk support and create any new drives on this disk, you will not be able to access the new drive(s) using other operating systems, including some versionsa of Windows 95 and Windows NT, as weel as earlier versions of Windows and MS-DOS. In addition, disk utilities that were not designed explicitly for FAT32 file system will not be able to work with this disk . If you need to access this disk with other operating systems ot older disk unitilities, do not enable large drive support.

Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N)? "

I pressed Yes.

It gives me 4 options:
1. Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive
2. Set Active Partition
3. Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive
4. Display partition Information

At option 4 it has following info:
current fixed disk drive: 1
Partition Status Type Volume Label MBytes System Usage
C: 1        A   PRI DOS             3910   FAT32  100%

Total disk space is 3910 Mbytes

What do I do now?

thank you for your help!!!!

Well it looks like your computer recognizes a 4 gig partition.  

However it is showing that you have an error:
"ScanDisk encountered a data error while reading cluster 2.

ScanDisk will try to continue past this error. When ScanDisk offers to perform a surface scan on thius disk, choose Yes."

When you hit yes, it tries to perform a surface scan.  And if it locks up here (how long did you wait till you gave up?)  it could mean that the drive has some bad sectors.  Are you trying to recover the data?  If so you may need to use some of the software I suggested earlier.  If you want to redo the machine and just forget the data, you may need to reformat the drive, or you may need to get a new hard drive.  For this current one may be dead.  You may need to find out what brand drive it is, and get a diagnostic tool from the manufacturer to see if the drive is indeed bad.  

Let us know what brand drive it is and we can probably get you a link to some diagnostics tools.  Some common hard drive brand sites:

www.wdc.com (Western Digital)
www.maxtor.com
www.fujitsu.com
www.ibm.com
www.toshiba.com

If you're getting intermittent detection of the drive, the drive is almost certainly failing.  The failure reading cluster 2 is especially bad, this means the drive can't read the data at the very beginning of the harddrive where Windows' startup software is located.

Try booting from the Win98 boot disk again, then at the A: prompt, type:

sys c:

Then it should say "System Transferred".  You should be able to remove the floppy and restart the system after powering off/on, and Windows should start.  If it gives an error, then there is a larger problem.

-dog*

Speaking of diags, I think that the CPi has the built-in harddrive diagnostics (the CPiA and CPxJ, C6x0 do for sure).  When the Dell logo is on-screen, press CTRL-ALT-D and this should launch internal harddrive diags.  They're not perfect (I've seen it pass a drive that took ~5 minutes to test and failed software-based diags, a normal drive should give a result in less than 1 minute) but its a starting point at least.  I think it mainly tests the SMART function of the drive, if enabled.

-dog*

Thank you for comments.

Here is the status update:
I rerun boot disk again and got into a: prompt. Then, I typed c: and scandisk.
At first it gives Abort, Retry, Fail?
If I type F, it hesitates for few seconds and then launches MS ScanDisk. So, it did perform scandisk and fixed Directory structure and File systems?. Then it ask to perform surface scan and fails because there are still errors on C: drive.

Here is a log of the scandisk:
"ScanDisk found and fixed the following problems in drive C:
1 invalid directory entry was removed
2 invalid directory entries were corrected
8 lost directories were reinstated
312 lost clusters were saved as files.

ScanDisk did not fix all the errors it found.

Try to run ScanDisk again.

Log:

There were 339,792 lost clusters in 15,201 chains, ScanDisk found 2 lost directories within the lost clusters, ScanDisk reattached the lost directories and restated its checks.

There were 312 lost clusters in 14 chains, ScanDisk saved the chain of lost clusters as files.

Surface Scan:
Data could not be read from cluster 2. There is no file using cluster 2. ScanDisk did not patch the cluster.

Drive C: still contains some errors."

It took several hours to run this scandisk, maybe 4-5 hours.

So, I rerun (takes about an hour or less now) scandisk again and it is ok untill it gets to surface scan and states that it cannot perform surface scan due to errors on c: drive.

This is where I stand know. I'm not trying to recover any data from the hdd. So, do you think that reformating harddrive might help?

Should I try fdisk? and how do I do that?

Or should I try diagnostic tools?

I will also try rebooting from the Win98 boot disk again, then at the A: prompt, type:sys c: to see if it should say "System Transferred".  Then try to remove the floppy and restart the system after powering off/on, to see if Windows starts.  I'll do it tonight.

RID: You have mentioned to try a zero-fill or low level format. What do you mean? Could you please break it down for me?

Dog*: I'll also try CTRL+ALT+D.

Thank you folks!

shoru

I think these machines use IBM hard drives; that could be checked with Dell site. IBM (or other manufacturers) often provide utilities for writing zeroes to all addresses on the hard drive, thus wiping all info and sometimes resetting errors on the drive. After such an operation, fdisk and format need to be run. Sometimes this is referred to as a "low-level format", which it probably isn't in all cases, but that is a debate in itself. Anyway, I have tried this with a few uncooperative hard drives and had some success - errors gone and drive again usable for O/S. Besides getting a new HD, I think this may be a possible way out of your predicament.

Regards
/RID

Gu_Ga:
Did you notice what brand the harddrive was when you removed it?  Dell tends to use IBM or Fujitsu drives, you'll need to take it out again to find out.  Then you can use the manufacturer's utility to test the drive.  IBM's utility will test the drive and attempt to repair any defects it finds.  There is also a function of this test to do the "zero-fill" and "Low level format" that rid mentioned, but both of these options will erase all your data.  IBM's "Drive Fitness Test" can be downloaded from:
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Run the downloaded file, it will create the diskette you need to start from to run the DFT.  It will only run if you have an IBM drive though (TravelStar most likely).

-dog*

Hi,
Harddrive is IBM-OEM Model:DTCA-24090 E182115 S
Rated: 5v- 500mA
P/N; 0040374 4090MB
MLC: f03057 (7944cyl, 1GHEAD. 63 sec/T)

???

I'll get back soon with more updates.

Dear Experts,
Thank you very much for all of your input! I apologize for not getting back to you earlier. You all deserve some credit! I would like to split points but I need help on how to do it.

As for update what happaned to my hard drive, I did not have enough patience to work it through myself and paid somebody else to come over and get it fixed. It costed me $65 for 5Gig harddrive, installing win98 os and labor. However, you deserve credits too as i have learned quite a few thing about harddrives in here.

Thank you!
shoru

dogztar 14 A
rid 14 A
wakeup 14 A
frache 4 A
griffon 4 A

To make a split yourself:
Create new questions in this topic area, named "Points for [ExpertName]" and give each Q the required point value. Accept the first comment as the answer, if the intended expert comments. Ask the moderators (in community Support area) to delete this original Q, or to close it and refund the points.

Regards
/RID

Or the mods can reduce the points here and save you the trouble of creating one new question, plus we'll keep the information that was entered in this question.  Then you create additional questions and "Accept Comment as Answer" in this question with reduced points.

-dog*

Gu_Ga

You asked to split points between dogztar, Rid and Wakeup.
I have reduced the points on this question from 50 to 20 as indicated by your request at Community Support. Please copy the URL and create a new question in this topic area for the other Experts to whom you wish to award points. The title of the question should read "Points for", followed by the Expert's name. In the question itself, you should paste the link to the original question and perhaps a comment stating that the points are for their help with that question. Once you have created the new questions, you can go back to the original, and accept the comment from the Expert for whom you did not create a new question. The Experts will  comment in your new "Points for" question(s), which you then accept and grade to close.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Thank you.

** Mindphaser - Community Support Moderator **

Thank you,
I have learned quite a bit.