PC Problem:
On Tuesday, I turned on my computer and was sent to CMOS with a note about the clock. I found the clock a few hours off and an incorrect date. I fixed this and continued on my way with no further problems. I got the same complaint on Wednesday, but after fixing it, I got a complaint about a bad system disk, which certainly gets one’s attention. I stuck in my Windows XP emergency floppy and got a DOS prompt. I have two hard drives; one (“C”) has Windows and several partitions, the other (“D”) has my data in two partitions. A little changing of directory and directory checking revealed that the “C” and “D” drives had become reversed.
I got out my Acronis emergency disk and attempted to change the drive letters. They seemed to change as requested, but when I left Acronis, they reversed again. After several repeats of this, I opened up the computer case. Reseating the cables on the hard drives had no effect. After I unplugged the data disk, Windows loaded normally, and I was able to use my file management program (Ztree). All logical drives on the system disk were present. The data disk was not shown (as would be expected); the interesting thing is that there was no “D” drive; higher lettered drives were not re-lettered; there was a gap between “C” and “E”.
After this, I plugged the data drive back on the mother board and replaced the CMOS battery. Operation was now normal, and continues to be normal. I suspect that the whole problem was due to a dying CMOS battery, which was a bit unusual, since it was less than three years old. (I have a 1994 computer whose date was still good when I turned it on a few years ago).
The lessons of this story seem to be:
1- Replace the CMOS battery at any suspicion of bad clock (I had a spare in the fridge)
2- Back up data often (I use a 4 GB memory stick which I carry at all times), and also occasionally copy data to an older backup computer.
3- Back up the system with something like Norton Ghost. I haven’t done this, and should look into this. Any suggestions would be welcome; I have a DVD writer, so it would be nice to back up the system to it.
The lessons of this story seem to be:
1- Replace the CMOS battery at any suspicion of bad clock (I had a spare in the fridge)
2- Back up data often (I use a 4 GB memory stick which I carry at all times), and also occasionally copy data to an older backup computer.
3- Back up the system with something like Norton Ghost. I haven’t done this, and should look into this. Any suggestions would be welcome; I have a DVD writer, so it would be nice to back up the system to it.
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