Mepis CDROM has wreaked havoc; my PC no longer finds any hard drive
Posts: 60
I was intending to use a Linux distro burned to CDROM as an aid to diagnosing a problem I've been having with another PC running WinXP. I chose Mepis and right now I'm wishing I hadn't.
Having used my installed o/s (WinXP Home) to burn the CDROM using my LG 4020B multi drive, I ran it first to get familiar with it (using the same drive). It installed, booted-up and ran OK. So I ended the session by logging-off. Since then (yesterday) that PC no longer finds any hard drive, so I can't boot back into Windows. The BIOS still sees the hard drive and the drive's LED shows plenty of activity - but WinXP won't boot. Attempts to reinstall WinXP from the CDROM abort automatically when Setup finds no hard drive. It won't even load the Recovery Console app which is on the WinXP CDROM, so I've no way of repairing the MBR.
The (only) hard drive installed is a Samsung SP1614C SATA. Mainboard is AOpen AK86-L, VIA K8T800/VT8237 chipset, AMD Sempron 3100+, 512 MB DDR RAM, Asus V9520 graphics card (128 MB AGP 8x), Audigy 2 soundcard.
Can anyone please suggest how I might try to retrieve this situation (presumably using the Mepis CDROM as a recovery disc, in some way)? I'm a newbie at this kind if thing and am desperate for some help.
(edit) I forgot to say that the version I burned is 3.1.1 (-1, I think)
Faulty burns???
Posts: 11
As to a faulty burn, how would I know?
Your burner program (I use BurnCDCC) should have an option to VERIFY the file system on the CD. If it fails - you know enough to toss that disk and try another. You should also use only the best quality media for new OS disks.
---> Bruce
Old thread
Posts: 365
Hi Bruce;
This post was a bit outdated...
Probably all was solved.
Ruud
Flaky Bios
Posts: 1109
The problems I used to have trying to install MEPIS probably had to due with the way the bios was detecting hard drives. I used to have mixed drive types in my PC, and the bios setup wouldn't recognize one of them (even though Windows saw it after loading).
After yanking the drive that wasn't properly recognized, I haven't seen this type of problem reoccur.
Jim C.