NO ROM BASIC-SYSTEM HALTED What does this mean ?

[Christoph Hager]

Hello

I have a big problem with my harddisk:
I formated my C: drive and now I can't boot from this drive any more.
(I have formated it with /s)
Before anything is booted I get the message (in 40x25 font):
NO ROM BASIC
SYSTEM HALTED.

But I can boot from a bootdisk.
What can I do ?>

Christoph

[ETSI DP Dept.]

> Christoph

When the bios can not find a bootable partition anywhere it attempts to
pass control to the ROM Basic code. Only original IBM brand PC's came
with ROM BASIC, so clones just display this msg and halt.

You need to make a bootable DOS partition on your hard disk:

1) run FDISK. The first time run it with this command line: FDISK /MBR.
It will appear to do nothing, but it will re-write the Master Boot Record
to drive zero (your HD). Then run it again with no parameters. Use choice
4 to display partition info and verify that there is an Active partition
and that it's a DOS partition. You can make a partition Active without
having to alter anything else. If you don't have a dos partition you'll
need to remake all your partitions and then reformat them. You don't want
to do this unless absolutely necessary.

2) Boot from a floppy and see if you can access drive C and get a dir
listing off of it ("dir c:\"). If so you know the partition is ok. Use
the SYS command to put a new system on drive C. It will put the same
system that's on the floppy onto the HD, so be sure your boot floppy is
the version of dos you want on the HD. Now reboot without the floppy, it
should boot from C:. Good Luck!

If the above doesn't work (can't get a dir of c:\), then maybe your cmos
parameters are not set up correctly and the bios can't talk to you HD.
double check them and fix 'em if they're wrong.
-- Paul --

[John Murphy]

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--

In article <31gul9$d...@news1.digex.net>, ns...@access1.digex.net (ETSI DP Dept.) says:

>When the bios can not find a bootable partition anywhere it attempts to
>pass control to the ROM Basic code. Only original IBM brand PC's came

Almost, but not quite, correct. When the BIOS can't find a bootabledevice, it is suppoused to invoke INT 18h, which exists solely to be
hooked by alternate boot devices (such as diskless boot ROMs). If no
alternate boot device is installed, then INT 18h does whatever isappropriate for the particular machine: IBM machines run ROM BASIC,
most others display a message indicating that no boot device was found,
some display that silly "No ROM BASIC" message, and a few even display

Murf

[marc...@ann.union.edu]

Are you SURE you did format /s? It looks like your machine can't find
an operating system on drive C:, so get your original DOS disk, boot
from it, and do SYS C:. That should transfer the files you need to
the HD.
--
Andrew Marchant-Shapiro Depts of Sociology and Political Science
USmail: Union College, Schenectady NY 12308 AT&T: (518) 388-6225
INTERNET: marc...@gar.union.edu