Atari Mega STE 2 bombs…Help!

[AdamG72]

I just dusted off my old Mega STE. It has not been used in quite a long time. It boots up to the hard drive after pressing the space bar. It starts to load and just about when it is going to go into TOS it 2 bombs. The bee cursor is visible and moves with the mouse. 
Without the hard drive attached it works fine off the floppy disk. I tried this one a year back with the same results but I did at that time get it too boot to the hard drive once randomly. 
Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?  It would be greatly appreciated!!!  I can provide a screenshot if necessary. 

[Zogging Hell]

Is there an auto folder program that has a problem (perhaps a bad sector on the hard drive or a program order clash?) Can you get passed the auto folder by holding down control and then have a look the disk from the desktop?

Perhaps there is some control panel issue.

If you manage to get control to work you could rename the auto folder temporarily and also rename the accessories. Then try a reboot. IF the problem has gone away, slowy reactivate programs in the auto folder and accessories until you get the problem again and you will know what the problem is.

[AdamG72]

Thanks that is a good thought.  There is an autofolder so I will give it a try.  I do have the advanced hard drive utility disk.  What I was able to do is boot holding alternate.  Once I got to the desk top, I ran the AHDI utility to load the hard drive driver.  I was then able to go up to the menu and install devices and then the 4 hard drive partitions popped up.  I will play around with with the auto folder and see what I can get there.  I am not sure what each file in it is doing yet.

[+DarkLord]

If you're using any ACC's check them as well. I'd disable all this stuff then

add it back, 1 at a time, to see if you can isolate the problem. HTH's. 

 

[AdamG72]

Thanks for your help.  I was able to get it back up and running!  I deleted the startup files and only then put back desktop.inf and the hard drive utility and it worked.  It did two bomb once so I do suspect there maybe some bad sectors.  I will have to look at how to use the utility disk to see if there is a way to scan the drive and potentially mark them as bad.  Thanks!

[TGB1718]

4 hours ago, AdamG72 said:

I will have to look at how to use the utility disk to see if there is a way to scan the drive and potentially mark them as bad

If you can use ICD Pro hard disk driver, there is a utility program HDUTIL.PRG which will map bad sectors for you.

You have to run ICDBOOT.PRG to install the hard disk driver or the HDUTIL.PRG won't work.