Non system disk or disk error

[MrSinister]

have a compaq deskpro P2 350Mhz, have wiped hard drive, fdisked partitions, now when i try and start my installation i always get :

Non system disk or disk error, replace disk and strike any key when ready.
have tried a variety of boot disks, win 98,2000,norton ghost and the compaq restore cds but to no avail.
have checked bios for boot order and that seems satisfactory, any ideas how to get arond this please ?

 

[Scotsdude]

does the bios actually SEE the hard drive? Scotsdude
Life is nothing without beer
Help us help you - let us know when our insane scribblings help!!

 

[fenix]

You might have done this and not mentioned it, but a possible answer based on the information that you gave is that the C: drive wasn't formatted. An unformatted drive will give you that error. The OS doesn't see a USABLE drive because it's not formatted.

A:\>format C:

 

[MrSinister]

the drive is not formatted as i cannot boot even on floppy to format it !

 

[wolluf]

Presumably you booted from a floppy to wipe drive & fdisk? So what's changed since then to stop you booting from a floppy?

 

[MrSinister]

absolutely nothing.
drive was wiped, partitioned and upon reboot u keep getting, non system disk, blah, blah !!!!

 

[wolluf]

Perhaps your floppy drive has developed a fault?

PS. Can you boot from CD? If you've created a partition, a win98/ME install CD will offer to format it for you before it does the setup.

 

[fenix]

yes this is puzzling especially if it was immediately after your fdisking. It sounds like you have to put another floppy drive in to see if the controller failed on the mobo, or if it was the drive itself. Of course, try a new cable first.

 

[fenix]

ps to Mrsinister, .

I was wondering how you get into your bios on your deskpro, what model it is, and if you can still access it with the problems you are having.

I have a few old 2000s and I need a special maintenance floppies to get in to the bios settings.

 

[MrSinister]

can access the bios on bootup using the F10 key, thats works a treat.
even b4 formatting and fdisking, the floppy drive was working fine within windows o/s.
have compaq restore cds but even then, theyc ome pre-installed with win95 or win 98 or NT but need to upgrade to 2000.
does not boot off 2000 cd either !!!!

 

[wolluf]

Didn't realise you were trying to put 2000 on. This probably won't work given that you're PC seems incapable of booting from anything! - but you could create the 4 floppy disks needed to start win2k install from floppy, and see if it will boot from them.

PS. If you've another PC you can install drive into, you could try this just to see if your PC is capable of booting at all now. Put drive in other PC, and boot it from win98 floppy. Make it bootable by format D: /s command (where D: is drive letter for the hard drive from problem PC) - or sys D: if already formatted. Now put it back in problem PC - set to boot from C drive - should boot to a dos prompt. If it doesn't, your PC sounds like its become unable to read the boot instructions from any device.

 

[dentarthurdent]

Is your PC one of the old deskpro 2000's with a diagnostic partition ? If so you may have wiped this during fdisking.
One other possibility is that the boot order has been changed but you've probably checked that.
The only other thing I can think of is to do as Wolluf says and make the Win2k install floppies.

Will.

 

[MrSinister]

win2k floppies do not get recognised by PC.again message appearing stating non system disk etc etc...
have changed floppy drives still same message, have feeling that disk controller could have gone ??
any ideas guys (& gyrls) ???

 

[wolluf]

So you can't boot from anything (floppy, hard drive or CDROM). So, sounds like something wrong with motherboard/bios (it appears to be failing to read the boot sector program on all these media which transfers control from bios to operating system's boot mechanism) - but I've no idea what or how to fix it.

 

[Guest_imported]

Curious... was there a spike or droop in voltage from the power supply/source at the time of FDISK of attempted Format?

 

[ceh4702]

COMPAQ tends to be proprietary and store the CMOS on the harddrive on some models. I think to start over you need to reset the CMOS with a special setup disk. Also if you can use fdisk, if you have made a new partition make sure it is marked bootable. You may only need to do this with logical partitions. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.