We are using a NI PXI-1042 chassis and a PXI-8196 controller to monitor some critical equipment at one of my clients' plants. We have used this box for many years without a problem. About a year ago we began having an "Operating System not found" error while booting up. We replaced the harddrive and the problem appeared to go away. Just recently I got a phone call from my client saying the box stopped working. He went out to take some data off the device and it said "Operating System not found". Since then I brought the box back to my lab to try and fix it. I did a few restarts/power-ups/downs and atleast once it was able to completely boot up. The times it didn't boot it wouldn't find the harddrive. It would say this:
Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1.6
Copyright 1985-2003 Phoenix Technologies Ltd
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2004 National Instruments Corp
NI PXI-8196 Controller
BIOS Version 1.3
CPU = Intel Pentium (R) M processor 2.00GHz
2039 System RAM Passed
2048K Cache SRAM Passed
Fixed Disk 0: vWNI^[UsMH_zw:0ytat <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mouse Initialized
Right after this it would say "Operating System not found". I removed the controller and harddrive and blew in them like an old ATARI game and I think just out of luck or something I was able to increase the amount of times it would boot up. Eventually it started booting up everytime (Probably 15 times in a row). It doesn't give the Fixed Disk 0 when it boots up. It has the Fujitsu harddrive name instead. I still had no faith in it so I wanted to break it. I tried restarting it and shutting it down. I pushed the power button. Nothing would break it again. Then I decided to just pull the power cable while it was running!! BINGO!!!! I broke it.
Right now it has the Fixed Disk 0: vWNI^[UsMH_zw:0ytat message and then goes to a screen that says "Operating System not found".
The harddrive is a Fujitsu model: MHW2080AT.
Any suggestions?
