Hard drive looses capacity down to that of a floppy

[thorsteinnk]

My computer recently lost power and upon booting up again, I forgot
that there was a floppy disc in the floppy drive. It was a system
bootable floppy (win98 startup disk if I remember correctly). I was
away when it booted into the disc and the result was a a:> prompt on
the screen. Well, I thought nothing of it, and removed the disk from
the drive and rebooted. When the computer was up and running, I checked
to see if one of my hard drives (not the one with the OS on) was ok,
but it wasn't and now had a capacity of only 1.38 MB.It also appears to
have a FAT-12 formatting.

I am baffled by this. I run Win XP pro and in Disk Manager I see the
drive as being healthy and with the full capacity, but still I only get
the 1.38 MB in windows explorer.

Any ideas?

 

[Rod Speed]

My computer recently lost power and upon booting up again, I forgot
that there was a floppy disc in the floppy drive. It was a system
bootable floppy (win98 startup disk if I remember correctly). I was
away when it booted into the disc and the result was a a:> prompt on
the screen. Well, I thought nothing of it, and removed the disk from
the drive and rebooted. When the computer was up and running, I
checked to see if one of my hard drives (not the one with the OS on)
was ok, but it wasn't and now had a capacity of only 1.38 MB.It also
appears to have a FAT-12 formatting.

I am baffled by this. I run Win XP pro and in Disk Manager I see the
drive as being healthy and with the full capacity, but still I only
get the 1.38 MB in windows explorer.

Any ideas?

Its got its tiny little brain scrambled about that drive
and has now decided that its the floppy drive.

Or you have and you're still looking at the floppy drive.

 

[Arno Wagner]

My computer recently lost power and upon booting up again, I forgot
that there was a floppy disc in the floppy drive. It was a system
bootable floppy (win98 startup disk if I remember correctly). I was
away when it booted into the disc and the result was a a:> prompt on
the screen. Well, I thought nothing of it, and removed the disk from
the drive and rebooted. When the computer was up and running, I checked
to see if one of my hard drives (not the one with the OS on) was ok,
but it wasn't and now had a capacity of only 1.38 MB.It also appears to
have a FAT-12 formatting.

I am baffled by this. I run Win XP pro and in Disk Manager I see the
drive as being healthy and with the full capacity, but still I only get
the 1.38 MB in windows explorer.

Any ideas?

Hmmm. Bootsector virus on that floppy and the HDD now has
the floppy bootsector?

Arno

 

[thorsteinnk]

I have now scanned my computer and the floppy drive (with the suspected
floppy in it) with AVG Free antivirus and the online Panda Activescan,
and it came up empty. Wouldn't the antivirus programs detect this
bootsector virus, if there was one?

 

[Rod Speed]

I have now scanned my computer and the floppy drive (with the
suspected floppy in it) with AVG Free antivirus and the online Panda
Activescan, and it came up empty. Wouldn't the antivirus programs
detect this bootsector virus, if there was one?
Yep.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have now scanned my computer and the floppy drive (with the suspected
floppy in it) with AVG Free antivirus and the online Panda Activescan,
and it came up empty. Wouldn't the antivirus programs detect this
bootsector virus, if there was one?

It should. So it is likely something else...

Arno