Desperate - computer will not boot

My windows 98 computer will not boot up

I get a message "invalid system disk - replace disk and strike any key" BUT there is no disk in any drive.

I have turned on and off - put disks in and removed them - all to no avail - getting desperate!

Prior to the problem starting I had uninstalled some games from the C drive, run defrag and loaded some games on the d drive. I had used the machine a couple of times after that before the problem started.

What can I do?

Thanks in advance - stuart

 

I would guess the PC is looking for the wrong drive at boot up.
This information is stored in your BIOS data. You can change the
sequence of drives searched at boot up by editing the BIOS
settings. For example A: C: would be the most usual and
system files for booting in this case would be first looked for on
the A: drive followed by the C: drive if A: is empty.
Do you know how to check this info on your PC ?
If not, do you have someone that can assist you to check and
correct the BIOS info ?
regards

 

vk2ycs,

Welcome to the board! It wouldn't hurt to pop open the case and check all you cables. Make sure they are tightly seated.

Mike

 

Sounds like the bios checking to see if it should boot from a disk in your floppy drive and is `seeing' a non existant floppy disk in your A drive on boot up.
Might be a faulty floppy drive Might be worth disconecting the ribbon cable and power supply to the floppy drive and try rebooting

 

Another possibility is a problem in the Master Boot Record.

Boot to a WIN98 boot disk and at the A:\ prompt type FDISK /MBR then remove the boot disk and reboot.

 

Desperate - computer will not boot (Part 2)

First, thanks for all the suggestions.

I made a boot disk from Bootdisk.com and tried it - when I did I got a message

"NTLDR is missing press any key to restart "

Pressing any key just sent it around again.

What else can I try (really desperate now as it has an assignment on the c drive!!!!!!

 

Are you sure you made the right boot disk?

Check this out.

 

Get the bootdisk for your OS here. I use these bootdisk and really like them.
By the way, when you install using one, it assigns the letter R: to the cdrom. Therefore you do not need to hunt for the cdrom letter because of the ramdrive.

By the way, did you have multiple OS's on that hdd? Like NT, W2K or XP installed also?