A neighbour has asked if I can give any help as his Win98 machine will no longer boot.
At power on we can hear the hard disk start up and shut down pretty much immediately.
Then get "insert system disk".

Can hit F2 at startup and get into BIOS setup (AwardBIOS) but can't see anything in there that would allow me to test the hard disk.

He has no system startup disk or recovery disk and no Win98 disks.

We can boot from an old AVG rescue disk; it says that there are no files to scan.

I downloaded a Win98 boot disk ISO (and burned a CD) and this boots OK (gives me a DOS (?) prompt). This doesn't recognize c:

Should we assume the disk has failed?

There are some files on the disk we would like to recover but thats not absolutely critical (he has data backups of most of the important files). But there is personal information on the disk so he would like to be sure it is wiped if it can't be recovered.

Can you suggest what I should do to try to get access to the disk?

Thanks
Martin

Welcome to SAF!

This doesn't look very good for the hard drive. If it's not recognized in the BIOS, then it's either failed, or a connector has come loose. Check the IDE cable and power plug for good, firm connection. Sometimes unplugging and replugging it a time or two will correct a poor connection. As a last resort, remove the drive and temporarily hook it to another computer to see if it can be accessed.

If it IS recognized in the BIOS, should I be able to see it somewhere in the BIOS setup routine (F2)? Wasn't sure just what I should be looking for?

We'll test the connectors later today.

Thanks

Opened it up and replugged the connectors but no change. Tried that a couple more times with no success.

He will probably replace it and I'll get rid of it on Freecycle (which I recommend!).

Thanks for your help.