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Become a qualified IT technician in just 70 learning hours .

The National BTEC Award in Computer Engineering is the first UK Nationally recognised qualification in Computer Assembly, Repairs and Maintenance.

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Q.  I've assembled my brand new Hardware, as instructed on the course and have partitioned the Hard-drive, I have also formatted it by using FORMAT C:/S when it restarts, after the POST all I get is a flashing cursor I can't type anything.  I have also checked that the Hard-drive is correctly configured in the CMOS.  Any Ideas ?

A.  The computer seems to be getting stuck at the point were it accesses
the Harddrive for the first time, this is the Master Boot Record
(MBR).

Boot using the Floppy Disk, change to C: and then view the contents by
typing DIR, if this doesn't work let me know the exact error message.

If it does work copy FDISK to C: by typing ( at A: prompt) XCOPY FDISK.EXE C:

We will then clear the master boot record by changing to C: and typing
FDISK/MBR This is a long shot and probably won't work so don't worry
about it too much, but restart and see if it can boot from the hard
drive.

Has this computer ever had an operating system installed before? If
so it should be OK, so jump to the software bit in this message.

If not it could be a few things, we just need to rule each of them out:

1. Hard Drive, or something connected to it.

Firstly disconnect anything that is sharing the same IDE cable as the
Harddrive, CD-ROM's etc.

Format the drive again, we can now use the /Q (quick) switch as we
have already formatted the new partition once so (at the A: Drive):

Format C:/Q/S

Restart and see if it boots.

If possible it would be nice to replace the cable, if you have
another, just to check it's not that.

The same goes for the Hard Drive, but don't use the one out of your
working PC, only if you have an old one.

2. BIOS

Change the BOOT sequence from A,C to C,A just to see if it makes any
difference, if not change it back.

3. Motherboard

This is a very longshot but try the IDE cable in the secondary port
instead of the primary, make sure the boot sequence is ammended if it
needs to be.

4. Software.

MS-DOS uses the FAT 16 filesystem (we go further into file systems
later). This is limited to drives of 2GB or under. This shouldn't
usually cause too much of a problem because the drive will still
function normally but just be limited to 2 gigabytes.

I would remove the Partition, and then create a Windows 98 Start up
Disk, either from your CD or www.bootdisk.com.

then create a new partition using this, Format C:/s and restart.

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