Please help :-)

[seyhon]

Hi,

A friend of mine just got a second-hand computer but it has a weird error, and I dunno what to do about it.

When starting up, it gives the 'invalid system disk' -or something like that- error, the error of a non-bootable diskette.
The problem is, there is no diskette in the drive.

I tried the unplug the drive but that didnt help, and I also tried to change some BIOS settings like not stopping on those errors, telling it there is no disk drive, etc... but that all didnt help.

I cant even boot from a cd, when I change the boot order.

Anyone who has an idea what it could be?
Is it even the diskette drive?

Please help me :-)

A Guy who doesnt know much about hardware.

[hoodedrat]

WELCOME TO SYSOPT!

i'm going to have to say that you dont have an operating system installed, if the computer cannot find a drive to boot to, then it cannot boot, so i'm guessing that hard drive is either not working or does not have an operating system installed on it :)

[BipolarBill]

...or it's not connected/jumpered properly or the motherboard needs to have it's CMOS cleared or the BIOS needs to have the drives configured properly (Auto should work).

[elroy]

What it is telling you is that it can't find the files necessary to start up. Apparently not on the hard drive or on the floppy drive. Try booting it with a boot floppy. You can make one on your machine by opening My Computer> Control Panel> ADD/Remove Programs> click on tab that says startup disk.
Put the floppy in the floppy drive while the machine is off and then turn it on. It should boot to A:\ At the A prompt type in dir/p and hit enter. This should show you what is on the drive or if the drive is blank or if the drive is not recognized. Let us know what happens.

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by seyhon
I tried the unplug the drive but that didnt help, and I also tried to change some BIOS settings like not stopping on those errors, telling it there is no disk drive, etc... but that all didnt help.


If the Real HDD is in the computer
make sure all the cables are fine and that the HDD spins with the Power On

then you need to get a bootable disk to do a FDISK and FORMAT the drive

www.bootdisk.com

:t