invalid system disk ?

[kirk6677]

I have a dell optiplex gs with a p133@166 and it has been a good pc for the two months that I have had it. at 166 it has been very stable but last night I was going to load corel draw on the computer and I did not get a chance to because my pc would not boot!
I keep getting a invalid system disk,change disk and press any key. I did not have anything in drive a and nothing in my cd rom
so I tried my windows startup disk and I got the same thing. no matter what I do that is all I get invalid system disk and I even checked the bios and every thing is correct can anyone help me ?
my mother boar is a fx chipset and I have a phoenex bios if that helps any
thanks

[fishboy]

bootup from bootdisk. Type a:sys c:. You should then be fine. Change boot sequence to a: c: if system is not seeing boot disk

[kirk6677]

Im kinda new to this stuff so I dont understand . How can I type this stuf in if I cant even get to dos? It says replace disk and strike any key so when I strike any key it just retry and then I get the same thing agian.

[drdeath]

do you have a disk in the floppy drive? if so, take out the disk when you boot up....

[DHatAVI]

What fishboy is telling you is to go into 'Setup' and set the bios to try booting from the A: drive first by setting the boot sequence to A: first the C:. Then you should be able to boot from your startup disk.
While you are in setup, check that your bios still shows the correct drive attached to the primary IDE channel. If not, then you may have drive problems. Check the connectors (both power and data) to the drive.
If the bios shows the correct drive, and you can boot with the startup disk, see if you can access the C: drive. If you can, then you may want to borrow a virus detection boot disk set, if you don't have them yourself, and do a scan of your C: drive before reinstalling the system files.

[fishboy]

you have to boot from a floppy boot disk. Once you boot from this disk, you will be left at an a: From this a:, type sys c:. The files command.com, io.sys, and msdos.sys should then be transferred to the root directory.

[kirk6677]

as I said to begin with, I didn't have a disk in drive a: or in drive d: {cd-rom} which are the only two drives that I have and every thing in the bios is set corectly and when I use auto config for the hard drive the bios detects it and when I disable the floppy I still get the same thing
any ideas?

Had to edit you guys were faster than me on a reply.
anyway I did check the power and data cords and they were fine. and I did try to boot a: first in the bios and it would still give the error with a windows bootup disk. so far ive tried everything that you guys said so is this a bad thing ? if so break the news to me easy ,I dont have any backup!the computer was bought used with programs allready installed.

[This message has been edited by kirk6677 (edited 10-13-99).]

[kirk6677]

mabey this is what i get for buying a vintage pentium for a first computer and the trying to treat it like a p3

[fishboy]

Are you saying you cant even get to A:? If you can at least get to a:, use the sys command. Is there an OS on this machine? The invalid disk message usually means the command.com file cannot be read. If it is deleted or corrupt, this is the message you will get. The sys c: puts this file back. If you have another HD, put that one in so you know its the HD, not board.

[drizzle]

How about this...when it says 'invalid disk replace and strike key' are you getting any access to the A: drive? Does the drive actually access the floppy disk?

[kirk6677]

to answer fishboys questions,no I cant even get to a: . and I probably know what os means but I had a brainfart so tell me what os stands for and Ill tell you if I have it or not to answer drizzles question,when I strike any key the a: light comes on for about a 1/10 of a second but I cant hear it do anything even when the windows setup disk was in.and my hard drive light will also flash for a 1/2 sec or so

[drizzle]

OS - Operating System

It is possible that your boot disk is no good. Do you have another computer that you can create a bootdisk with?

[fishboy]

I agree with drizzle. Make a boot disk from the computer you are on now and boot from that. You should at least be able to get to an a:. Go to Control Panel Add\Remove programs\Start up disk. Then try sys c:

[kirk6677]

thanks for the help guys id be tottaly lost without you
Ill will try a nother boot disk and hopefuly next time im on this sight I will be on that computer instead of at work trying to avoid calls

[drizzle]

You can download a bootdisk image from www.techdrivers.com there's download links on the main page.

[kirk6677]

well guys to bad for me . I tried a new boot up disk and it did finaly get me to a: but when I typed in sys c: I got a invalid drive specification . and of course at home with a pc not working I couldnt get ahold of you guys so I called dell tech support and I ended up having to wipe the hard drive .the guy said something about I lost my sys files and the good news is my hard drive is still good . the bad news is I have no backup ,I do have win 95 but I dont have drivers for my cd-rom so now its just a fact of finding them so I can load everything else.
thanks for the help anyway I still learned something new

[digital_rat]

windrivers.com or driverhq.com for the cd-rom
drivers...also i think the there is a generic
cd driver (oak?) that works with about 85%
of the cd-roms out there...

good luck

[kirk6677]

if I can find someone at work with win98 would that work? I heard that it has a lot of drivers.

[rybinn]

Someone please correct me if I am wrong but........

If you can get to a machine using Win98----you can make a '98 start up disk. Which uses the "OAK" tech cd drivers mentioned earlier and loads them to a temporary Ram drive to enable the cd long enough for you to run the OS setup. I believe it only works with Atapi cd-roms though.