alex@rruxc.UUCP (A DeSimone) (09/30/85)
<<chomp, chomp, chomp>>
Help! I tried to boot up my unixpc (PC 7300) last night and ran into
a real brick wall -> if anyone can help out, I'd greatly appreciate it.
The problem is, I can't get the machine to boot from the hard disk any more.
When I power up (or reset) the first strange thing I notice is that instead of
getting four or five little bars in the upper left corner of the screen as I'm
used to, I only get one. I'm sure this means something but I don't know what.
Then I get the usual "banner" screen and the machine searches for a floppy and
when it finds none, searches the hard disk. At this point, I get the error
message:
retrying transfer, block=39200
It repeats at least a dozen times and then I get:
unrecoverable read error
or something like that and it just sits there. I can boot from floppy using
the system software disks just fine. Problem is, once I've got the floppy
system up, I don't know what I can do to try and fix the problem. I tried to
"mount" the hard disk but that didn't work. A search through the documentation
gave no help. I don't have the "Service Manual" and I imagine that's probably
where they talk about this kind of stuff.
It seems to me like there's a bad block in the "boot" portion of the hard disk.
Anyway, I ran diagnostics against the hard disk and got no errors. I don't
*want* to re-initialize my hard disk and start from scratch unless absolutely
necessary (especially since this might not work either). Any suggestions as
to the problem and/or a solution? I've had the machine since May and this is
my first significant problem with it. Please reply via email and I'll summarize
to the net if appropriate. Thanks much.
->Alex DeSimone, Amala Consultants Inc. @ Bell Communications Research
->..!{ihnp4,allegra}!rruxc!alex
"I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."