When i boot up the following message appears; disk boot failure, insert system disk & press enter.

once system disk has been inserted after a while windows start up menu is shoiwn with 3 options.

1 satrt comp with cd rom support
2 start comp without cd rom support
3 view help file

(option 1 cannot b selected because cd rom is not recognisedand does not seem to operate)

when i select option 2 a messsage appears; preparing 2 start your comp this may take a few minutes.

a message appears saying winows 98 has detected that drive c does not contian a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. Thgere are several possible causes

shows a list of causes

i have tried to format but the following error message is shown; formate is not supported on drive c ...format is terminated

can anyone help please?
email me on akmal@ic24.net

aky,
I am assuming that the hard drive was bootable with a working operating system. Use the 98 boot disk and chose to boot with or with out a CD-ROM if it doesn’t recognize a CD-ROM it will still send you to a DOS prompt. Once at the DOS prompt type FDISK and choose Y to enable large (FAT32) disk support. Next view partition information to get a picture of what the drive looks like. It will tell you about the partitions,
the file system, dsk usage and other pertinent disk information. If FDISK seesthe disk you may be able to recover by exiting FDISK and typing fdisk /mbr to place a new boot record to the drive. This doesn’t harm data but will make other OS’s unable to boot such as NT or Linux. If that is not an issue type that command. Once you do that the type sys c: /s this will put the boot file back on the hard drive.
If FDISK is unable to see the hard drive you to go to the BIOS of your machine and see if the BIOS is seeing a hard drive if the BIOS is not and depending on the BIOS manufacturer it will allow you to auto detect the hard disk OR manually set the hard disk parameters. The hard drive parameters are located on the drive itself write them down and enter into the BIOS. If none of these steps work most likely your drive is toast. A drive manufacturer will take the drive back under the following conditions.
1. It is still under warranty
2. You run a utility from the hard drive manufacturer to determine the disk problem.
3. Once you have determined 1 and 2 call the manufacturer to get a RMA (return merchandise authorization) box it up and mail it to them.
4. Wait by the mailbox for your new drive to come.

Good Luck!
-=X=-