EpoX 8KHA+ Hard drive problems

[Sleek]

It all started when I noticed my hard drive was skipping a couple weeks ago, then today I found out I had the CD ROM as the Master and the hard drive as the slave. So, I change the jumper on the back of the cd rom to slave, and I found out I had the CD rom in IDE port 1, and the hard drive in port 2. So I switch them and then my hard drive wouldn't get detected. So I load the fail safe defaults and it gets detected in the BIOS! But when I tried to boot into Windows (Windows 2000) it gave me an error saying "invalid boot loader". So I go to reinstall Windows, it finishes copying the files, but when it restarts it gives me that "invalid boot loader" error again. I tried clearing the CMOS but nothing. I thought the IDE port 1 might be messed up or somthing so I switched the hard drive back to port 2, it gets detected SOMETIMES, not all the time. Should I delete the partition and format? Or what?

8KHA+
Athlon XP1800+
512mb DDR PC2100 (Crucial)
GeForce4 Ti4400
Western Digital 80gb 7200rpm 8mb cache
Aopen 52x Cd-Rom

 

[TheWart]

I would get a Win98 boot disk (floppy), then boot into Dos, then go "format /MBR" (If my command is wrong, please correct me someone)

This will clear the Master Boot Record, and then you can reformat and have a clompletely clean slate.

 

[sgopal2]

I dont think that "format" is on the Win98 boot disk. You may have to try "fdisk /mbr" instead

 

[amdskip]

Originally posted by: sgopal2
I dont think that "format" is on the Win98 boot disk. You may have to try "fdisk /mbr" instead

Yes it is, format: c
Proceed with format, all data will be lost? Y/N

Been there, done that too many times.