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From: billp@unimuc.UUCP (Bill Potter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: IBM/PC-AT doesn't boot anymore -- HELP
Message-ID: <119@unimuc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 13:01:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: unimuc.119
Posted: Tue Jul  7 13:01:38 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 01:28:36 EDT
References: <119@bernina.UUCP>
Organization: UniSoft GmbH
Lines: 46

It could be that the boot sectors got zapped, this happened to me
with my XT a couple of times for no apparent reason. 

Assuming that you can still boot the system from a floppy do the
following.

1: Boot from the floopy
2: Do a chkdsk to check the intergrity of the disk
3: If all is ok so far then make a backup of everthing (Oh dear all those
   diskettes :-) . In your situation this is good idea anyway. 
4: Format your disk. This is the only way you have got at the
   moment of getting the bootstrap onto the disk. DON'T FORGET the /S .
5: Check that the disk boots, it will comes up asking for the
   date and time and have an awful American keyboard which will
   give you lots of fun :-( .
6: Restore everything.
7: Now comes the fun part, you've just spend x hours getting here
   and you never want to do this again so now use the debugger or
   write a program to read sectors 1 & 2 of cylinder 0, head 0.
   Transfer the date read into the form of an array initialisation.

   e.g. boot_sect[1024] = { 0x00 0x01 ..... 0x?? };

   And write a program to write the data to sectors 1 & 2 of
   cylinder 1, head 0. Call this program restboot or something
   like that. Now whenever you loose your bootstrap all you need 
   to do is run restboot and of you go again.

All this does not however answer the question as to why DOS
at random intervals trashes the bootstrap.

I would mail you the program except I've got no connection from my
IBM to the NET at the moment. Mail me if you need more help.

bill potter

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