Computer Help
 

I have an old desktop machine that I've been tinkering with. It was running Win 98, and was very slow. I decided to try to reinstall windows, but it wouldn't let me because the copy of 98 that I have is older than the version on it. So, long story short, I went to the dos prompt and formatted the hard drive, thinking that I could then install my copy of Win 98 and hopefully have a machine that could handle basic word processing, email etc. Big mistake on my part. Now I can't do anything basically.

I tried creating several boot disks, but the computer won't read them and I get an error message saying

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key.

It does this even when all drives are empty.

What should I do?

Thanks.

How computer savvy are you? Does the below seem like something you can do?

Go into the BIOS and check that it's set to check A: (or the floppy) before C: (hard drive) in the booting order.

If that makes no sense, kipnap your local neighborhood geek.

Yeah, I can do that. Hang on, let me see.

It gets me back to the same point.

It verifies the DMI Pool Data, then gives me the error message.

bump, please help.

Search the web for Win 98 boot disk. (Google.com) You'll find a download that will help you. If not, I have a Win 98 boot disk I can zip up and email you.


Todd

Ok, I tried that. For several hours last night. Then this morning my beautiful wife mentioned that her floppy disk drive doesn't work and hasn't worked for several years.

So, I made a Boot CD, but it still didn't work. I changed the BIOS to boot from the cd first. Then I made a combo boot disk with my Win 98 cd.

I'm pretty much stuck right now. Anybody have any more hints?

when talking about the Boot CD, definie "doesn't work" - is it not recognizing it at all?

I'm assuming it's still giving the invalid system disk error?

Well, for one, floppy drives are dirt cheap, you might want to go to your loval CompUSA (or similar store) and replace the busted floppy drive and give that a try again.

Other than that, if it's saying "invalid system disk" when nothing is in the CD and floppy drive, the OS on the hard drive is corrupted or the hard drive went bad (this is speculation, btw. I'm not a hardware expert).

You might want to try to pull that hard drive out, and hook it up to another system as a second (slave) hard drive and see if you can access it that way. If not, then you know the hard drive is done (which might explain why it was running so slow.)

Sorry I wasn't more clear.

It would say something like "Booting from Atapi CD"
Then it would say "No bootable media found" followed by the system error message.

Without a floppy drive, I think you're stuck.. as far as installing Win98 from scratch. I don't think booting from CD will work.. although I could be wrong.


Todd

Could you temporarily take the floppy drive out of another computer until you got this one running?

Are you sure it is a bootable CD? Can you try it on a different computer? You can boot and install from a CD without a floppy.

I just copied the files from the boot disk to the CD. Would that still work or is there anything special about making a boot CD?

Thanks guys for the help.

Yes, making a bootable CD is quite a bit different than making a bootable floppy. The software program you are using to burn the CD should have the option to make a CD bootable. Then some dialog boxes should come up with places for you to put things like command.com, autoexec.bat, config.sys, etc.

The problem with using a boot CD is that it will require you to have the proper CD driver loaded. Otherwise you'll get an invalid system disk error.

Would you ever consider writing a dynasty detailing this debacle? :)

Yeah, I've thought about it. I was planning on writing a dynasty soon for the somewhat new Solecismic FTP program but haven't gotten around to it yet.

How do I find out what driver I'll need?

Thanks for the advice.