A PS1 boot disk was used to boot my ME. The CD drive and plug and play hard drive are no longer detected however the machine says the hardware for the CD drive is fine. Technically I now have a PS1 that is trying to run mE. The computer thinks it has a virus. When I put the recovery CDs in it will read the first and second but not the third so it misses the drivers etc. for the CD and plug and play. I was told to make a boot disk via 2 boot sites. Both sites would download the boot exe but the first told me that all my floppys were write protected and the second aborts the write to the floppy before finishing. I was told to make a boot disk from a friend's brand new xp. I made the floppy and booted and got the a: prompt and typed FDISK as instructed and also FDISK/MBR but both say bad or missing file name. I had downloaded and installed a new bios earlier.

Hi and welcome to PCHF.

I am sure that you will find the right bootdisk at our afilliate site bootdisk.com.
You could even try the Windows 98SE bootdisk as it will have all of the tools you need (FDisk etc).

Hi austinw

Welcome to our great help forum, we hope you enjoy being a member and we get to help you with all of your PC needs :smiley:

Now on to your current problem!

Can you expand on a few things so as we can help you more specifically:

What was you trying to acheive?
What do you mean by PS1?
How do you know the machine detects the devices?
Where did you get your PS1 Boot Disk from?
What result would you like us to help you acheive now?

My HP ME was unstable.
The ME was booted with an old IBM 486 Setup floppy.

It immediately showed the system/performance window saying:
File System: All drivers are using MS-Dos compatibility mode.
Vrtual Memory: MS-Dos compatibility mode.
In the Select an item window:
Compatibility mode paging reduces over-all system performance.
Master Boot Record modified. See important details in Help.
Click on Details and it says:

Master boot record has been modified.
The master boot record has been modified by some program. This can be caused by disk manager software used to add large hard disk drives to older computers, or encryption or other security software. It can also be caused by a virus on your computer. If you do not have disk-management or security software installed, scan you computer for viruses.

Important
Viruses can cause data loss. Check all the disks on your computer immediately for a virus by using any virus-checking software.

The CD drive would work to run the first 2 of 3 of the HP setup disks but not the 3rd and won't recognize any other CD. :computer4

I had just installed a new Sony Read/Wrtie CD drive but couldn't install the software as it was on CD. I went to Sony's web site and to the Nero website. I couldn't find anything to download on the Sony site. I downloaded three files from the Nero site. They autounzip on download but that still didn't make the CD drive work.

The computer says that the hardware is working properly.

In Setup F1 it recognizes the new Sony CD drive and acknowledges the internal hard drive by name.

I downloaded and installed a new Bios driver. That didn't fix it.

I went to Computer Geeks and they sold me a new extrenal hard drive and told me they didn't know what to do. To contact HP. I backed up everything to the new HD and then reconfigured the internal hard drive with the HP setup disks (2 it wouldn't take the 3rd with the drivers). - The IBM PS1 486 didn't have a CD drive so after 2 it thinks it is done. I now discovered that it wouldn't read the plug and play external hard drive so I now couldn't get at any of my files.

I was told by HP to go to bootdisk.com and download the ME, (ME, ME mirror 1, 2 or 3 (it didn't matter). It downloaded fine but when I went to put it on a floppy it said that all floppys were write protected - they weren't.

They then told me to go to boot98.com (I believe) and that 98 didn't matter. The download worked but then it would only write a small percent to a floppy and then lock up.

I told them I had an XP but I couldn't go on-line to download anything as it is missing the TCP/IP and my IP Provider determined that Outlook Express needed to be reinstalled. Which I did to no avail.

HP told me to try to make a boot disc from that and that is when we found out the XP's a: drive isn't working.

They also told me I could use an old Windows 95 boot disk which I did.

During one of these boots (the 95) the CD drive worked but I didn't know how to get out of DOS. The next time I booted with that disk it didn't.

During one of these boots it said bad line 1 in config.sys or autoexec.bat.
I found nothing in config.sys but the first line of autoexe.bat said cd c: which wasn't in keeping with the the autoexec in the XP (all other info in the autoexecs was the same) so I removed it. I haven't gotten that error since.

The XP will read the Plug and Play Hard Drive, CDs and has an internal Zip drive but none of these wil help me get the informition from the XP computer to the ME which I need to do to upgrade and publish my website.

HP then told me to get a boot from a friend with a new XP - they said it would have the file FDISK.exe and to load it then type FDISK.exe. I read their information online, did what they asked and typed FDISK.exe and also FDISK/MBR. Neither worked. It said bad or missing file name.

On the HP help site it says to load the 2nd disk and then to go to the DOS prompt - it will not read the 2nd disk or any other disk - just the first disk on boot up. It says that the first disk has advanced featured on it. It doesn't.

Regarding ME:

1. I need the ME to access my info on the external Hard drive so I need it to acknowledge the plug and play

2. I need to finish installing the software for the Sony CD drive on the ME so that I can read and write CDs

and I believe these are being blocked because the boot tells the computer that it is an old PS1 486.

Regarding XP:

3. I need the XP to go on line and to fix the a: drive so that the XP is functional.
To do this I believe I need to remove all my info on the XP to the extrenal hard drive and reconfigure the internal hard drive but this may not fix the problem as when I try to reconfigure without erasing files it does nothing. At least nothing I can see. I still have no TCP/IP installed. It was on a network at one time but it doesn't even seem to overide the old network settings.

Whew! Done :hello2: :cheesy:

Hi Austinw

Flippin'eck sounds like a nightmare!

Sorry for the late reply to your post, I've just moved home and had to wait ages for my broadband to be turned on! It felt like I'd lost my right arm!

Are you still having the issues or have you managed to resolve this?

If you're still having trouble:




Do you have a HDD which you can wipe without worrying about data?

If so dis-connect the other drives (those with the data you want to keep) then you can install XP (if you have it, use ME if you havn't) on this HDD choosing to delete all partitions and format the drive to NTFS (XP). Once the OS has installed you should be able to connect the other drives and (hopefully!) see the data you want to get and copy across to your HDD. This will also give you a PC which works properly with out all the issues you mention below.

I hope that helps and once again my apologies for the late reply. Let us know how you get on.

Gromit