Acer Aspire pc prob?????

[sweeper2]

when it boots up, it says "file allocation table bad drive c:"

I am pretty sure this might indicate a bad HD, am i correct at assuming this?? This pc is my mother-in-law's , she just called me and asked me what that meant. She usually would leave it on all the time, and now when she came back, everything was locked up, so she turned off by switch in back, then turned on and it booted up, then goes to win 98 screen for a sec, then goes back to dos screen with above message.

any help would be appreciated..thanks...

[elroy]

The FAT has a problem. It can be fixed by formatting the drive but it could indicate impending drive failure. Of course formatting the drive means all data is gone. If it will start up, copy all the important files from the drive and test with the manufacturers utility. Either re-format and re-install Windows or replace the drive depending on the test results.

[sweeper2]

what would her manufactures utility be? is it a cd-rom or 1.44 floppy? Never have used that method? Can you do it from the bios? Can't get into windows......

[Sweeper]

Sounds like a HD gone bad. Had a similar problem with a older computer at work running windows 98. Turned out it had several bad sectors. You can try running CHKDSK at the command prompt. It should show if the drive is good or if it has some bad sectors. If bad sectors do show try running CHKDSK /F. Good luck.

[sweeper2]

she is not worried about an files as she has nothing on there that is really important, she basiclly just plays the solitare etc. games and does e-mail and online bill paying, which she can later go to the web site and get that back.

i will try and work on it later this week or weekend, probably see what size HD she has and see if she might need a bigger one or if i can fix it.

what if i can't get into dos? to run any scandisk? might see if i can enter bios and boot from cd, i do believe she has a recovery disk that might help....thanks

[John Prophet]

you can always just boot from a win98se floppy...then you can try to format or do whatever you want to do

[sweeper2]

i hope she has all of the stuff...that's the problem..when i go and work on these older systems, nobody keeps any of there original cd's or disks....kind of a pain sometimes..

[crossedup]

A clean install of 98se will usually pick up all the hardware in those old Aspire systems with the exception of possibly the modem.

They were made circa windows 95b, 98 FE.