K7M motherboard - bootup problem (W2k)

[jaymon]

Hello Everyone,
I have a windows 2000 dinosaur with a K7M motherboard. System was fine until last month. Not sure what happened. The Power Supply (240 V) seems okay, since i swapped it with a known good one. I reseated the memory too, and even tried a known good AGP video card. Anyways, system would boot up, then i see the white Windows 2000 logo, then before it "switches" over to the login part, it reboots itself. Right now im trying to read up on this board. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks for any responses ...

[TimW]

Have you tried a repair install of w2k?
Boot from cd ...follow the prompts to repair (not recovery console).

[Dan Penny]

Verify if it's the O/S or a hardware problem. Try booting the machine with a Win98SE Boot Disk*. If the machine boots OK to a command prompt ( A:\> ) it's a software problem (O/S) as opposed to a hardware problem.

*The above bootdisk image file is a self extracting file and has to be executed (run) from a running Windows(9x) machine in order to create the actual startup diskette on one of your floppy disks. (This image file produces the same bootdisk which 98SE creates.) This downloaded image file will format the floppy disk to ensure its integrity, write the files to the disk, then verify the file write, so it'll take a minute or three to create the bootdisk.

Ensure the floppy drive is set as the first boot device in the bios. http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/23.html

NOTE: When you boot a machine with this boot floppy, it creates a RAMDRIVE in system memory to contain DOS system tools/drivers. Thus it will move your "normal" CDROM device/drive letter "up" one level. (If your CDROM is normally E: it will be F: when booting with this bootdisk.)

[jaymon]

TimW,
Okay, I did the W2k repair, and it informed me that "Setup has determined that drive C: is corrupted and cannot be repaired. Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, Press F3."

Now, can i retrieve my documents somehow, then i can just reformat the harddrive?

Dan Penny,
I havent done what you suggested yet. Is this a way to get my documents? just wondering.

Thanks a bunch guys.

[Dan Penny]

If the drive is set up as NTFS, no. This bootdisk is an MSDOS 7.x bootdisk, which is FAT32. A FAT32 based operating system cannot "see/interpret" NTFS partions/drives. (It sees it as "Non-Dos".)

There are NTFS "readers" out there which will read the drives, but they do not allow file manipulation per se(sp?).

I would suggest obtaining the hard disk manufacturers diagnostics utilities (floppy or CD based) and checking the hard disk;

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

If you don't know what type of hard disk you have, Download, install, and run Everest Home Edition on this machine. (Clean FreeWare).

This program will provide the information required without opening the system and dismantling things to get at the hard disk.

[tunered]

The way i read the post he cannot get into windows, you may have to get another hard drive, install windows, install your old hd to slave and see if you can recover that way. ed

[Dan Penny]

True, I got caught up in the reply. However if he knows the hard disk make/model, he can still obtain and run the disk diags.

I also meant to add that I have the same setup on one of my other machines. K7M w/ W2K Prof. Athlon 600Mhz. If you need/want the K7M manual, it;s here;

http://www.cyberus.ca/~danpenny/k7m-104.pdf (2.4MB)

[jaymon]

tunered,
hey i used your suggestion and it worked. hardest part was finding an extra frigging harddrive! I loaded w2k on it, then the other as slave .. then BAM! Thanks for the information bro.

Dan,
Also, thanks for your help. The diagnostics will sure come in handy sometime. Thanks for the help as well.

[tunered]

No problem, Glad it worked out. ed