Invalid system disk

[DC3967]

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/mad.gif
After 4/5 years of faithful servicer my PC is now booting only as far as the following message: "invalid system disk Replace thge disk and then press any key".
Previously, this has appeared only when I forgot to remove a floppy from the drive and quickly reectified when I took floppy out.
I have no idea what to do. I do not have the oiginal disks any longer.
Help.

[YODA74]

1.could be a boot sector virus??-AntiCMOS.A virus

2.computer could be running an anti-virus program

3.Your computer is using hard disk management software (such as Disk Manager, EZ-Drive, or DrivePro) for hard disk geometry translation. These tools provide support for large hard disks (more than 1024 cylinders) when your computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) does not support large hard disks.

4.Windows Setup was unable to copy the system files to the hard disk

5.Security software has disabled access to drive C.

go here
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q128/7/30.ASP

Let me ask this have you ever changed the CMOS Battery in the 4/5 years that you've owned this??
Please do not post the same question twice http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif


------------------
W/Me (memory eater)
Me Help (http://www.webtechgeek.com/center_Frame_win_me_tips.html)
BUDS TS. (http://www.geocities.com/~budallen/whatsnew.html)
answers (http://www.dewassoc.com/support/index.html)

[This message has been edited by YODA74 (edited 11-08-2001).]

[Janet Tan]

Hi Yoda74,

I am very interested in this post because it so happens I am having sort of the same problem. That is my PC does not boot after I put in a 'new' hard disk (ie swop from another computer). To explain further, originally I have 2 hard disks (a HP drive of 1.6GB and a Maxtor of about 6 GB, and I swopped the smaller hard disk for another Maxtor of about 8.4GB.

With the hard disks in and detected by the Bios, I could not boot even with the floppy drive.
But someone suggested I should disable the hard disks and try to just boot with the floppy, and it booted up to the dos command prompt.

As you have commented in your last post, the problem might lie in a disk manager or disk overlay program. I really think this might be my problem as my computer is an old HP Vectra VL5/166 Series 4, that is an old Pentium model which I suspect might not be able to use big drives.

However, as the Bios Setup shows that the drives are detected, am I right to say that the PC does not work with a disk overlay program?

If that is true, is there an overlay program I can download in a diskette so that I can boot up with the hard disks so that I can format them.

Sorry to butt in, but I thought I would get some expert suggestions here.

Thanks in advance. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

[BigBlue66]

Janet,

Go to Maxtor's website. You should be able to download their disk management software. Can't remember what theirs is called.

However, if the BIOS is recognizing the harddrive, then chances are very good that there is no DDO installed on the harddrive. Before I used any kind of DDO software, I would boot with a floppy that has fdisk.exe on it. Once you're at the A:\ prompt, type "fdisk", without the quotes. Post back with the results of that. If fdisk can see the drive(s), then that's a good thing and we will need to figure out how to get you up and running. As a last resort, you could just go ahead and use fdisk to set an active partition, format the drive and then load an operating system on it. However, don't do that until you post back with the results of fdisk.

DC3967: There is a very good possibility that the harddrive is dying or has died. Have you ran fdisk to see if the drive is recognized by it? If not, do so and post back with the results.

Good luck to both of you.

Big Blue 66


------------------
Life = Karma, or is it, Karma = Life?

[Janet Tan]

Hi Big Blue 66

First, I must apologise for the very long delay in replying to your kind advice since Nov 2001. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif
This is because I think I forgot to do a thread tracking by email, but thought I had and therefore did not know about your post until now (Mar 2002) and by chance too. (Long story)

I am so very sorry. :-0

Now, to your advice.
I have boot up my PC and when the EZ-Bios says to press any key if I want to boot from floppy, I did that and put in the start-up floppy for W98.
I typed in fdisk and here are the results:
I selected display partition, results are:
Partion C: 1
Status: A
Type: Pri Dos
Volume Label: (Blank)
Mbytes: 8048
System: Fat32
Usage: 100%
Under the Change current fixed disk drive:
Disk Drv Mbytes Free Usage
1 8048 100%
C: 8048
2 6166 100%
D: 6166

Hope the above info is helpful.

Thanks again for your post. (And I won't forget to track this posting).

[Janet Tan]

Hi again,

As an update to my recent post.

I did get the computer to boot into Windows 98 using the Maxtor EZ-Bios.

However, now the system sort of stays at 27% during the boot-up for about 5-10mins, and then continues booting up to Windows 98.

Is it the side effect of using Maxtor EZ-Bios and is there any way around it?

Thanks again.