Dead Sharp Laptop

[saknott1]

Well, color me stupid. I had a Sharp laptop with Windows 95(pentium 166 I think, 16 MB RAM with 1.34 GB Hard drive) that got a Illegal Operation error (RUNDLL). I tried to use an upgrade CD (95) to fix it. The upgrade was older than the original version and would not let me run setup. I tried to install Windows 98 and it was SUPER slow so, I uninstalled it back to Win95. I tried to load regular Windows 95 and I got a message that I needed to uninstall the anti-virus.

I uninstalled Norton and tried to reinstall Win95 yet again. I got a message that the computer came loaded with anti-virus. I couldn't find any so...I decided to format! I formatted and now I cannot get the floppy drive to work. I tried to change the start up to CD and use a boot disk I copied to CD. No luck. Now I have a very dead laptop.

Incidentally...it is the son of the president of my company's personal laptop. HELP!! Yikes!!!

[howste]

Ouch! OK, what have you tried to get the floppy drive working again? Formatting the hard drive shouldn't have done anything to the floppy drive.
Basic questions (don't take offense - I overlook simple stuff all the time):
•Is virus protection turned on in CMOS?
•Is the disk you're trying to boot from bootable?
•Is CMOS set to boot from a: first?
•Is the floppy set to 1.44 3½" (not something goofy like 720 5¼")in CMOS?

A little bit more information about the symptoms would help.

Steve

[saknott1]

The virus protection in BIOS settings is disabled

The boot disk is one I downloaded from the Sharp website for use with this model

The Boot sequence is Floppy, CD, Hard Drive (I even copied the diskette to a CD and changed the order with no luck)

The floppy size is not changeable

When I boot it gives me the system info and then the the error: Invalid System Disk, Replace disk and then press any key.

I have tried a 98 boot disk, a 95 boot disk and a boot CD.

The light comes on for the floppy drive, but it does not make the sound like it is trying to read it, however, if I take the floppy out, it sounds like it is trying to read a disk.

I also removed the floppy and put it back in, thinking it just lost contact.

Please let me know what you think. I appreciate your help!

[saknott1]

Oh, I forgot to mention that sometimes when I have the boot sequence to boot to floppy, it reboots itself endlessly....isn't THAT special!

Sherri