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The following article is the first in a series that helps solve many of the common boot problems with hard drives. The article explains how to verify the drive functionality, determine the correct setup for the drive, and repair problems with the Master Boot Sector once the drive is verified to be functional. This information will help solve some very common problems encountered in a computer service department. This article is designed to work with a system that has a single drive with one bootable partition using a FAT 16 structure (all DOS and older Windows systems), and no drive overlay.
It is extremely important not to make or write any changes to data on the hard drive without first verifying the hard drive configuration. Therefore, the first priority when unable to access information on a hard drive is to verify all of the configuration information dealing with the suspect hard drive.
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Partition Parameter |
Value or Equation |
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Partition Status |
Bootable |
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Starting Head |
1 |
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Starting Sector |
1 |
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Starting Cylinder |
0 |
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Partition Type |
Bigdos (drives greater than 30 MB), otherwise DOS 12 |
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Ending Head |
Total Number of Heads -1 |
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Ending Sector |
Sectors per Track displayed in Volume Boot Sector |
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Ending Cylinder |
Number of Cylinders set in CMOS - 2 |
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Total # of Sectors |
Number of Sectors displayed in Volume Boot Sector |
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Start Absolute Sector |
Number of Sectors per Track in Volume Boot Sector |
|
Boot Signature |
55AA |
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