OOOppps.. I think I screwed up!

[Frenzied]

I've been trying to reformat an old PC. I wanted to reformat and put in Windows 98 (was running 95). I made a boot disk and got as far as setting up Win 98 when the computer froze (no mouse movement, nothing) I turned it off , and now when I try to turn it back on I get "Invalid system disk Replace disk and push any key to continue"
I have put the boot disk in and still get the same message, I tried another boot disk, samething, I have checked the BIOS to make sure it boots from A drive , changed it to boot from C drive, nothing works. Did I really screw up here? HELP PLEASE!!!!!!

[bunkskunk]

Howdy,

I've had similar problems with bogus boot disks in the past. I don't think you have hurt anything. I'd make sure you have a boot disk that works properly, and then reformat the drive. I've always had problems with boot disks that I made myself with windows..don't know why... they just never work. Go to bootdisk.com or search for boot disk on google and download the appropriate file. May or may not be the problem...I wasted a week of vacation fighting with a reinstall and it was because all 3 of my boot disks were all bad...still makes me mad thinking about it.

[Frenzied]

Thanx, I'll give it a shot .......I'll keep ya posted!!!

[Frenzied]

I downloaded the TECHWORM boot disk from bootdisk.com and tried that but I still get the invalid system disk message. Any other ideas?

[SPEEDO]

Did you disconnect any of the ide cables or the floppy cable?

Does the light on the floppy come on right away or does it come on after awhile?

Also does it stay on?

SPEEDO

[ukulele]

Speedo is on the right track. Because floppy drives are so rarely used anymore they get lethargic in their complacency. It is absolutely essential to clean them with a floppy disk cleaner occasionally to keep them running at peak preformance. I have replaced more the a few because they sat too long without being used. This applies to the machine writing the disk as well as the one reading it.

[Frenzied]

I checked all my connections and all my connections are good. The floppy drive was working when I tried to reformat it. It booted from the disk no poroblem. UUUUHG.It's probably not worth the cash it would cost to take it in but I sure would like to fix it. Any more suggestions?

[iconoclastic]

don't create that boot disk on an windows ME box or it will not work

do create the disk from a dos prompt other wise go back to bootdisk and get the files for creating a bootable Cd

one other thought what was the boot sequence in your bios

[DocEvi1]

I had the same problem this morning. As usual, the sliding section of a floppy disk had come off and was stuck in, making sure the drive couldn't read. Try opening it up and having a look, in most cases it won't hurt.

Stefan

[ukulele]

I must have made hundreds of boot disks by now with rarely ever a problem. 99% of the time it was a bad floppy diskette. Some are just cheap junk and none of them weather well. Old diskettes can foul the drive read heads with mold and dust. If the diskettes are old break the old piggy bank and buy some new ones. Ironically the best I have found are made by Tandy. Stay away from cheap disks sold in large packs. If you are still having trouble with the floppy drive access, get a new floppy drive. They are $10 to $20 now. Always keep diskettes in sealed containers or zip lock baggies. Date them, when they are more then a few years old or stored in a damp environment be suspicious of them. Floppy drives that are reading intermittently are not worth keeping and can actually ruin the diskettes.

[Frenzied]

thanx for all the advice. I will definately look at my floppy drive. I use Sony disks and they're relatively new so I don't think that's the problem. my boot sequence is A drive first (I tried it to boot from C first just to see if it worked but it was a no-go) I will try all your suggestions and let ya know if anything worked

thanx !

[Bigjakkstaffa]

if you've got a 98 SE disc set up the boot sequence to:

CD ROM
HDD 0
Floppy

If its like my SE disc it should be a bootable ATAPI CDROM, and it should do pretty much the same as a boot disc, just set up the BIOS pop in the CD and power on.... go knock yourself out

[iconoclastic]

just for the sake of things open your case and with a flash light look at the cables and all connections to see if you jared anything or accidently disconnected an electrical connection or data connection

also open up your bios and chack the sutodetect function for the system to see if the bios can see the drive

is this system a propritary system like a compaq or IBM ?

[Johnny Fist]

Do you have access to an XP machine? You could always just set it up as a slave drive and format it through disk management. Just an idea you might want to try if nothing else seems to work.

[smily_03]

I agree mostly with Johnny Fist. But I dont think you'd need an XP machine to do it. At work when we have trouble with stuff like that we'll just slave the hard drive to another machine, format it there, then either copy the windows cab files to the hard drive and run setup from ther or (if the drive is large enough), partition the drive into two logical drives and throw up the ghost image that we would use for that drive onto the extended partition and run it from there. you should also be able to do the sys thing this way; eg. if your two hdd's are C (master) and D (slave), you would do (dos prompt) c:\>sys c: d: (if the o/s is the same on both machines) or c:\sys a: d: (if the o/s is different and you want to use the o/s from the boot disk). in your case if you dont have a spare machine lying around, i'm sure a buddy would let you use theirs since this wouldn't make any permanent changes to their comp