I took out the battery, now PC cannot find C drive, newbie help please

[robbert]

I took out the battery, now PC cannot find C drive, newbie help please
This is an old AMD 586, w98, 32 ram 2 gig HD
I took out the battery, its round, size of a quarter to try it in another pc. I did not use this PC for a month or so. I put in the older battery from the other pc, and on startup it lost its time, I reset the time, restarted, now it counts the memory fine, asks if I want to hit DEL for setup, I can get to setup, BUT, then its asks for a disk in drive A.
I made a startup disk from another w98 machine.
Help a newbie get his HD back

All I did was remove the battery, and leave the machine off for a month.
I went into setup, and I think it looks to the C drive first, rather than the A drive
Help

 

[Shudder]

There should be an option in the Bios for boot order. If it's looking to the C drive first, it's probably set to boot IDE, Floppy, CDRom or something similar. See if you can change the order and put the floppy first.

Also, make sure the settings are set to Auto for the ide devices. It should then automatically pick up that there's a hard drive there.

Give that a shot

 

[Radarman]

I can't believe what I just read, you removed the BIOS CMOS battery, left the machine sit for about a month, put in a used battery, and the machine won't boot. I would have been surprised if it was working, the battery is what maintains the BIOS CMOS Memory, you take it out and you have just lost all of your BIOS Memory. You might try going into the bios on bootup and trying to load the default bios settings, but I don't think you will be able to get into the bios. Try it though.
Just my .02c worth. Radarman

 

[Ornery]

I've seen some really old PCs that require a "setup disk" as opposed to the normal BIOS setup utility we're used to.

Who built the PC?

 

[obenton]

Without a battery to preserve CMOS settings, should boot up with default settings. Generally, that includes IDE detect setting of "Auto", which should detect the hard drive each time the computer boots up - but only if it's a hard drive that is capable of being detected automatically - that is, one for which you don't have to enter cylinders, heads, etc., in which case you have to enter the settings yourself. Get another battery of the same type - about $2 at Radio Shack or Walmart. Best boot order for you would be A:, C:, and then whatever.

 

[NicColt]

by the looks of this the cmos may not even have AUTO IDE detect. if this is true everytime you boot without a battery you would need to input your drives settings such as Heads, Cyl. sectors ect. Good lord I havent done that in at least 6 years. what is it with these old computer problems lately.

 

[jinsonxu]

The price of progress

 

[Outfits]

Sounds like Ornery hit it on the nose, some Compac's and others need a bios disk to run "setup". The info may be on your HD as well, so if you can put it in a working sys you may be able to recover it. If that doesnt work and you can't find the orginal floppy or cannot get what you need from Manuf. website its history. Good luck.