invalid system disk after windows upgrade

[battlefordguy]

Hello

I need a little help. perforned a upgrade on windows ME, through mircosofts upgrade. upgrade was succesful and complete. upon rebooting I received the message " invalid system disk, replace disk and hit any key"..... nothing would work at this point.
I created a boot disk and can get the computer to boot to the A:\ drive.
I do not have the original disks, what now??

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Battlefordguy

[shanmuga]

welcome to PC GUIDE battlefordguy

By upgrade do you mean you have upgraded your win9x to win me? or do you mean that you have applied updates to win me from windows update site ?

one obvious question :p Did you leave any floppy disk inside the drive when you rebooted?

[battlefordguy]

Thank you for the reply.

I downloaded updates from the mircosoft site.

I do not have any operating system disks and did not leave any in the machine. I have been in contact with Mircosoft, but because the download was complete they feel there is no issue.
However I can not get the computer to run windows, it is stuck on
"invalid system disk", etc etc.
the system is a 900mz sony running windows ME.
Using a boot disk I can get it to boot to the A:drive, but don't know what to do from there??


battlefordguy

[mjc]

What were you "upgrading"?

It sounds more like you were "updating" by way of the Winodws update site?

The difference between upgrading and updating is that with upgrading you are installing a newer version of the oprerating system. Updating means applying fixes/patches to the version you currently own.

Microsoft only offers updates for download.

You you know which items you were updating?

Do you have any kind of "restore" materials? Did you machine come with any operating system disks?


If you have access to another computer you can download the hard drive manufacturers diagnostics disk...first find the manufacturer of your hard drive then post back with that....

I'm sorry to say this but MS may be right...this sounds like a hardware problem, specifically a dead drive.

[battlefordguy]

Thank you for the response.

OK to clariy I was "updating" Windows ME and once completed I re-booted the system, then received the message " invalid system disk"

I will be checking the harddrive to find the type, etc, etc.

No I did not recive any disks and to coplicate things a little, the system is a sony which can have propritory hardware and software.

sony does have replacment recovery disks, but they will not ship to Canada, where I am????

any other suggestions??

Battlefordguy

[ErnieK]

To find out if it "just" the boot.ini file that is corrupted try the following.

Boot computer with a boot floppy and at the A:\prompt switch to C:\ and if you can reach the C:\ promt then it means that the drive is being read.

The type dir to see if the drive contents can be seen.

[battlefordguy]

Hello

I can boot to A;\ then change to C and upon checking the DIR., I get a list of 8 files. Config sys, windows, my documents, etc, etc,

what then??

Thank you for any assitance.

battlefordguy

[david eaton]

What boot options are set in the BIOS? From your description, it sounds as if the computer is trying to boot from either floppy or CD.

Go into the BIOS, and set the boot sequence to C only, or any option that gives the HD as first choice, and try again.

[battlefordguy]

any suggestions on how to enter the BIOS??

thanks

Battleforguy

[battlefordguy]

OK I entered the BIOS using F2, changed the boot sequence so it boots from the hard drive first. saved changes and exited.

Same message appeared " invalid system disk"

I downloaded the hard drives dionostic program and checked disk for errors and scanned disk surface- NO ERRORS.

system will boot using boot-up disk, can switch from A:\ TO c:\ but do not now anything from there...

suggestions??

Battlefordguy

[Paul Komski]

It sounds like either your boot sector has been screwed in some way or you need to reinstall the system files to the C drive. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q128/7/30.asp&NoWebContent=1 for how to do the latter.

There are other approaches but let's see how you get on for now. Can you confirm that you only have one partition on the drive.

[david eaton]

If you can read a directory of C:, it looks as if the MBR may be corrupted.

To check, if you boot with a floppy, then change to the C: drive and enter the following:
CD windows (enter)
win(enter)
That should bring up your windows installation.

To repair the MBR, try booting from the floppy again, and typing
fdisk / mbr (enter) . Then remove the floppy, and reboot

[battlefordguy]

Thank you for the responses.

I am sure that there is no partition on the c drive.

I booted from the floppy and then tried " fdisk \ mbr - ( got Bad command )- tried from both the a: & C:- tried typing with and with out spaces received - bad command all times.

booted from the floppy, typed: cd windows, enter Win, enter and then received the folowing message: cannot find helper driver ensure the following has been installed " IFSHLP.SYS " ????

???? help...

Battlefordguy

[deddard]

you could try the fixmbr command - boot from a floppy, change to the c drive (if possible) and type in fixmbr -this will run from a floppy as well if I remember correctly.

[battlefordguy]

hello

I tried "fix mbr" all I got was the message " bad command"
tried several ways with and with out spaces- no luck " bad command" all the way..

???

Battlefordguy

[Paul Komski]

booted from the floppy and then tried " fdisk \ mbr

It should have been fdisk /mbr entered at the A:\> prompt. See HERE (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1). Running it is not totally without risk, which is why it wouldn't be my first choice, though it is very likely to be successful unless there is a problem with msdos.sys.

There IS a partition on the drive, since you can see it and see the files on it from a floppy diskette. What is corrupted is the boot process; that is to say either the master boot record (mbr) or the msdos.sys file to which the mbr passes control during the boot process.

One other thing you could try is to run scandisk from the floppy diskette.

Finally you might want to scan for boot sector viruses or just reinstall Windows over your current installaion.

[BTW fixmbr is a WindowsNT/2K/XP command usually run from the recovery console]

[battlefordguy]

Thank you for the clarifacation.

However, I did try "fdisk \ mbr " from both the A:\ and the C:\ all i got was " bad command'????

battlefordguy

[Paul Komski]

It is
fdisk
then a space
then a FORWARD SLASH AS PER / NOT A BACKSLASH AS PER \
then NO space
then mbr

fdisk /mbr

[battlefordguy]

thank you for the detail..

However I did type it in that way and still received " bad command"

I am using windows ME, does that make a difference.??

thanks for the assistance, if you are getting frustrated just think how much restrait I am using, since i have a balcony five floors up!!!

Battlefordguy:confused:

[mjc]

Go to www.bootdisk.com and grab a Win98 bootdisk and use that one to boot with.

[battlefordguy]

OK

then what?? I booted with the disk and then tried fdisk /mbr.
no errors or bad command. just came back A:\

tried restarting system, sane issue" invalid system disk"

the new boot disk has drivers for the cd-rom, was i suppossed to use this to install a new operating system?

[Paul Komski]

If you didn't do this from the link provided earlier then try it now. This should place the required system files into the C: drive.

At the command prompt, type the following commands, pressing ENTER after each command: (look carefully for the spaces - or if in doubt go and read the microsoft link again).

c:
cd\windows\command
attrib c:\msdos.sys -s -h -r
copy c:\msdos.sys c:\msdos.xxx
a:
sys c:
attrib c:\msdos.sys -s -h -r
del c:\msdos.sys
copy c:\msdos.xxx c:\msdos.sys
attrib c:\msdos.sys +s +h +r


btw the fdisk /mbr doesn't give you any messages - but it should have worked OK if it took you back to the A prompt.

[battlefordguy]

Hello

thank you for the reply.

I booted up the system using the windows 98 boot-up disk.

I changed to the C:\ drive and entered " cd\windows\command " as far as i can tell this line worked- new line was then C:\windows(entered) attrib c:\msdos.sys -s -h -r ( on that line)

when I entered " attrib c:\msdos.sys -s -h -r "
I got the message incorrect ms-dos version. ???

any idea's,

the windows version is windows ME

Battlefordguy

[Paul Komski]

Well there is a DOS version conflict and this can happen doing this to a Win98 installation using a WinME startup diskette, or vice versa. You will need a startup diskette made from a WinME computer or a boot disk containing the same version of DOS "compatible with WinME".

Although the files from different versions have the same names, there must be no version conflicts between the files when they are in place on the HDD.

There are three basic files (four on a compressed drive) that are copied over from the floppy to the C: drive when the sys C: command is used from the a: prompt. These are io.sys, command.com and msdos.sys. However the original msdos.sys file must be used and so this is first copied to keep it safe (after it has first been made visible and copyable using the attrib command). This original copy of msdos.sys is then used to reinstate it after the sys c: command has been issued.

That is my take of what shoud take place. You still have the option of running setup again and installing over the original installation - that is not particularly recommended - but is another way to get back these boot files onto your hdd.

[battlefordguy]

thank you for the reply.

I downloaded a me (oem) boot disk.

I tried going throught the same procedure.
c:
cd\windows\command
attrib c:\msdos.sys -s -h -r

However, this time it stated file not found ( msdos.sys)

sorry for all the grief!!!

should I just try to install a new operating system?

I do have a version of ME on a disk, however it is a zip file and I have no idea how to open it using dos.

I can go d:\dir and get a list of the files but cannot access or open any of them.

???

Battlefordguy

[Paul Komski]

The msdos.sys file is created/customised during setup. Attached is a working copy of a WinME msdos.sys running on a C drive with Windows as the default system directory. Just rename msdos.txt to msdos.sys and then copy it into a new folder made for it on your boot disk or onto another floppy altogether - then copy it directly into your C: drive. Nothing to lose at this stage - and if you have no msdos.sys your system wont boot.

FYI - a couple of links regarding the file follow:-

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;118579

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/msdos.htm

[Sylvander]

I tried the boot troubleshooter beginning here
http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/boot/walk/index.htm
and got this far http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/file_BadCorruption.htm

[battlefordguy]

Hello

thank you to all that assisted.

thanks Paul, coping that file over did the trick.

I copied the file switched the boot sequence to the c drive and bingo, back in business.

This all started with a update gone bad, does this happen from time to time with updates??

:D :D :D

thanks so much!!

Battlefordguy

[Paul Komski]

Whenever systemwide changes are made it is possible for the sytem to be corrupted in the process. It is a very good reason for making a backup image of you drive before starting such processes - or at least setting a restore point - or a backup of the registry.

Wouldn't say that losing a boot sequence is a typical result from visiting the MS update site - but with computers anything that can happen will happen now and then. That is both the beauty and the beast of troubleshooting them. ;)

BTW do you have system restore turned on? Perhaps you may need it at some time in the future. It can hog disk space (one of the reasons that ME got called memory eater) so set it for a lower percentage than the default - enough to go back in time to a couple of restore points earlier. System restore doesn't restore everythng but is often worth a shot - particularly since if the restore point doesn't work you can undo the change and get back to where you were.

[battlefordguy]

Hello
thanks so much.

the computer was a purchase for my sister and i was trying to set things up before handing it over. I will reccommed xp to her as i use it and find it much easier.

thanks

Battlefordguy