• Welcome to OS2World OLD-STATIC-BACKUP Forum.
 

News:

This is an old OS2World backup forum for reference only. IT IS READ ONLY!!!

If you need help with OS/2 - eComStation visit http://www.os2world.com/forum

Main Menu

** Starting OS/2 Error ¨OS2 can not use the hard disk drive or Floppy..¨ **

Started by fedemanz, 2012.04.11, 16:47:21

Previous topic - Next topic

fedemanz

Good morning guys. I am experiencing problems starting my system OS2. When I start the boot screen appears OS2 and after a few seconds I get the following legend ¨ os2 can not use the hard disk drive or
 diskette system corrects the previous error stopped and restarted the system ¨. Someone can help me with this is crucial to boot because the system handles a PLC.

ALT

That's a catch-all error message for a whole category of boot problems.  Basically, it means exactly what it says and not really much more.

When the OS/2 boot loader first starts, the system BIOS interface is being used to operate the boot disk.  Early on in the boot process, it needs to pass control over to OS/2's own device drivers.  Basically, this hand-off failed for some reason, and the device driver for your disk controller (IDE/ATAPI, SCSI or whatever) failed to gain control of the hardware.

"Some reason" being the operative phrase here.  There are about a thousand different things that could cause this, from hardware conflicts to file corruption to simple configuration errors.  More context is needed to even begin to attempt a diagnosis.

Did this error begin after some change (to hardware, software, or system configuration) was made to the system? 

fedemanz

The system was functioning well, do not add any new peripheral the only thing I did was try to make a disk cloning with clonezilla, which is not as if there is any command with two (fixboot) to the operating system and in the case of that existed as income .. Tell accurate data so that I can help. Thanks again!

Pete

Hi

It might be worth running sysinstx ?:  (where ?: is the boot drive letter involved) to make sure the system files are in place.

You would need to do this when booted from a CD or floppy drive or another OS/2 boot partition.

If that fails then you need to check the partition/volume information has not somehow been destroyed.

What version of OS/2 is involved?


Regards

Pete

fedemanz

Quote from: Pete on 2012.04.11, 18:48:02
Hi

It might be worth running sysinstx ?:  (where ?: is the boot drive letter involved) to make sure the system files are in place.

You would need to do this when booted from a CD or floppy drive or another OS/2 boot partition.

If that fails then you need to check the partition/volume information has not somehow been destroyed.

What version of OS/2 is involved?



Regards

Pete


I´ve OS/2 WARP 3. can you explain me how do i fix?

miturbide

Hola fedemanz

From what I reading you are using OS/2 Warp 3, and you are getting "Starting OS/2 Error ¨OS2 can not use the hard disk drive or Floppy" suddenly without any hardware or software changes.

Do you remember the size of the HDD and the partition running Warp 3?
Was it formatted FAT or HPFS?
Is this a critical business machine or server?

I don't remember well Warp 3, I'm using Warp 4.52 and eCS 2 for a long time, so I may be wrong. Can you try to boot with Alt+F1?
When the OS/2 square shows when you boot the machine press "Alt+F1" to show up a menu. Select the option to boot to command prompt.
Maybe it will not work and show you again the "Starting OS/2 Error ¨OS2 can not use the hard disk drive or Floppy"

If it don't work, I think you can boot with the "Installation Diskettes". Run the first three diskettes and when it asks you for input to start the install press "F3" to go the command prompt.
Maybe from there you can do a "CHKDSK /F" to the C: drive.
Martín Itúrbide
OS2World.com NewsMaster
Open Source Advocate

Skype - martiniturbide
Google Talk - martiniturbide@gmail.com

fedemanz

Hi Martin, I will try to do what you show me, I'll be updating the situation ..

ivan

Hi fedemanz,

I could ask which version of Warp 3 but I think they all started the same way with two diskettes - 'install diskette' and diskette 1'.  You will need to make 'diskette 2' from the Warp 3 CD because that has CHKDSK.COM on it.

Assuming your OS/2 boot partition was C: try the following.

1. Insert the install diskette and re-boot your computer.  Change to diskette 1 when prompted.

2. When prompted to install or go to command prompt select F3 command prompt.

3. Replace diskette 1 with the install diskette and type SYSINSTX C: in the window and hit enter.  Depending on what is displayed you can either -

4a. Type DIR C: and get a listing of your boot drive, or

4b. Replace the install diskette with diskette 2 and type CHKDSK C: /F and hit enter.  All going well chkdsk should run and end with the disk information.

5. If you got a dir listing or a completed chkdsk run, remove the diskette  and restart your computer - all going well it should restart as normal.  If it doesn't then you have more work to do with something like DFSee.

ivan

Andi

Quote from: fedemanz on 2012.04.11, 17:25:29
....the only thing I did was try to make a disk cloning with clonezilla, which is not as if there is any command with two (fixboot) to the operating system and in the case of that existed as income ...
I do not understand what you mean with that sentence. Probably your and my English are not compatible  ;) I do not know clonezilla but did you use some 'fixboot' command? From and for which operating system? If yes this might have destroyed your MBR...

RobertM

Re.CloneZilla: it is likely that if the attempt was made from a bootable windows disk, that windows or some other tool loaded on boot caused a change to either the boot sector or partition.

As for the sysinstx suggestion below, when you boot from the install disks, first check to see if the partition is visible... chkdsk as needed.

Another option is to try running dfsee from a bootable cd. It can be downloaded from www.dfsee.com
It has a plethora of tools for correcting mbr, geometry, and other issues - including, if memory serves, the ability to replicate the sysinstx functio of os/2's installation disks. Use with care though.


|
|
Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
|
|


miturbide

FYI.

Since fedemanz speaks spanish yesterday we talked for a while trying to help him solve his problem.

We made some progress yesterday. The problem seems to be focused in two parts.
1) It seems that the IDE HDD was changed to slave mode for cloning. So we switch it back (removed the pin) and started working (partially).
2) The HDD and mainboard are old and unreliable, so he needs to work on making a backup of the data and recover everything possible.

I hope that tonight he solves the problem.
Martín Itúrbide
OS2World.com NewsMaster
Open Source Advocate

Skype - martiniturbide
Google Talk - martiniturbide@gmail.com