(Solved) Compact flash drive - "mangled" boot up area \ VOGONS

(Solved) Compact flash drive - "mangled" boot up area

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First post, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-28, 21:01

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This has happened twice in two days: my SanDisk 512MB compact flash drive, containing FAT16 + DOS 6, will no longer boot up. The folder and data structure on it is intact, but the area on the CF that does the initial booting up seems to be corrupted. This could be due to my insane overclocking experiments.

When the BIOS POST screen gets to the stage where it says "Starting MS-DOS...", it just prints garbage on the screen, in this case it's "ted.", and then stops booting. How can I fix the "boot up area" on the CF, without having to FDISK and FORMAT and reinstall DOS on to it? Thanks a lot for any advice.

Last edited by retro games 100 on 2011-03-01, 04:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 6, by Markk

Posted on 2011-02-28, 21:48

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Have you tried to scan your CF card for viruses?

Reply 2 of 6, by TheMAN

Posted on 2011-02-28, 21:48

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fdisk /mbr?
sys c:?

Reply 3 of 6, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-28, 22:16

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Thanks a lot for the advice! 😀 I must read Keropi's thread about DOS viruses. I tried fdisk /mbr, but that did not solve my problem. However! I tried sys c: (at the floppy disk A: prompt), and that has completely fixed the problem. Thanks a lot!

Reply 4 of 6, by DonutKing

Posted on 2011-02-28, 22:21

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I've found CF cards to be pretty flakey on older hardware, personally. random corruption, or sporadic read errors seem fairly common for me, even on different cards 😒

Good to see you sorted it out, I'd run SCANDISK on it as well just to be safe 😀

Reply 5 of 6, by Mau1wurf1977

Posted on 2011-02-28, 23:04

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Most BIOS have a Virus protect option, which write protects that area of your HDD.

My SS7 boards don't like CF cards on the primary controller. Get random read errors (press retry and it's all good). Secondary controller and it's all flawless...

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
My YouTube channel

Reply 6 of 6, by Markk

Posted on 2011-02-28, 23:07

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And since you use a CF drive, there's no need for any ancient dos antivirus program. Just find a card reader that can taake CF cards and scan it on your main PC.

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