invalid system disk!! - help

sakdieselsakdiesel NC
edited December 2007 in Hardware
on boot-up my daughter's computer says "invalid system disk, replace disk and hit enter" I have a proper system disk (CD) in. I also have a startup floppy in the floppy drive. It is running Windows 98se. I changed the boot sequence to boot from floppy, cdrom, hard disk. It still looks to the CD even if I set the boot sequence, floppy, floppy, floppy. Any one have any ideas? Is this a hard drive crash? (never had that happen before) :confused:

Comments

  • KinetikKinetik Ocala, Florida
    edited October 2007
    Sounds like a hard drive crash... Are you sure your booting from a startup floppy?
  • sakdieselsakdiesel NC
    edited October 2007
    Yeah, I'm sure. The CD I also tried was the Windows 98se disk and that didn't work either.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Those are the symptoms that you get when the Windows (or restore) CD is:

    a) damaged and not readable, or
    b) dirty and not readable, or
    c) the wrong CD, or
    d) the CD drive's internal read laser is obscured with debris of some sort
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2007
    Also not all windows 98se discs are bootable, some required to boot off the floppy first to load the cdma drivers because at the time 98se came out most computers couldn't boot off the cdrom from bios.

    What I'm not getting a clear picture of is what are you actually attempting to do? It's been a long while, but I don't remember 98 having a repair feature it was clean install or install over top only.

    So as I understand it if you have no cd or floppy in you are getting a no-system disk error. Which means the boot sector for your harddrive likely got corrupted. If you can get it to boot off the floppy and that floppy has the fdisk command on it do a fdisk /mbr that should remove any boot records and clean it out. You don't actually need anything in the mbr for windows to boot.
  • KinetikKinetik Ocala, Florida
    edited October 2007
    Well if your absolutely sure its a good floppy, like you took it to another Win 98 machine and formated it with system files then it could be a bad floppy drive / cable.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    I don't remember 98 having a repair feature it was clean install or install over top only
    Exactly. That was considered to be a major feature of XP - the ability to perform a repair installation.
  • sakdieselsakdiesel NC
    edited October 2007
    kryyst wrote:
    So as I understand it if you have no cd or floppy in you are getting a no-system disk error. Which means the boot sector for your harddrive likely got corrupted. If you can get it to boot off the floppy and that floppy has the fdisk command on it do a fdisk /mbr that should remove any boot records and clean it out. You don't actually need anything in the mbr for windows to boot.


    How do I do a fdisk/mbr ?
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2007
    You need a startup disk (floppy disk usually) that has the fdisk command on it. Some windows 98 sets came like this. You then boot your computer up off the floppy drive which will take you to an a:> prompt.

    Then you type fdisk /mbr and hit enter.
  • sakdieselsakdiesel NC
    edited November 2007
    There is my problem. I cannot get the computer to access or see the floppy drive (with the startup disk in it) or the windows 98 CD. It tells me "invalid system disk". It tells me the same thing if I don't have any disk in it at all!
    :sad2::sad2:
  • KinetikKinetik Ocala, Florida
    edited November 2007
    When u first turn your computer on does the floppy light turn on???
  • sakdieselsakdiesel NC
    edited November 2007
    Sorry I'm slow to respond here. I've been working a lot of late hours. I will have to check to see if it lights up
  • OperatorOperator England
    edited November 2007
    Are you still having this problem? If so could you answer some questions for me to help you.
    Is it a new problem or have you had it before?
    What is your chipset? eg. nvidia, intel etc
    How does your hard drive connect to your motherboard? ATA- IDE (ribbon) or SATA cable?
    Have you recently installed some chipset drivers or updated them?
    Have you recently changed or moved the ata/sata cables?

    To offer a quick solution/ suggestion, unplug your cd and floppy drive and try moving the hard drive cable to different sockets on your motherboard and try to boot. If its ATA- IDE, you should have 1 or 2 sockets, if SATA you should have usually around 6 sockets. So go by trial and error and try to boot with each individual one, swapping after each fail.
    This method solved the same problem for me and im using a nVidia nforce chipset with a SATA connection.
    Hope this helps
  • sakdieselsakdiesel NC
    edited December 2007
    Thanks for the info Operator. Everything has changed around here. My Daughter has decided to purchase a new computer with her own hard earned money. I will take the old drive and hook it up in my computer to see if I can salvage anything that may be worthy of saving, including the drive. :)
Sign In or Register to comment.