non system disk

[andyh]

ok ive made a mistake! was previously having blue screens etc so i decided to replace win98 with win98se unfortunately system crashed during installation which caused the saving of the original win98 to error when i eventually got win98se loaded i had lost all my applications such as office 2000 etc and i was also and worse i was still getting blue screens 'system busy or has become unstable' decided to format c: which i have done once before and boot from win98 boot disk to get cd driver and then re install, problem is that i get an error message saying non system disk please replace and try again, thing is i get this message whether or not there is a floppy in the a drive or not is there any way around this i can get into bios/cmos etc, i do not have a recovery disk/startup disk the bios is award the cpu is cyrixx mII 6x 86 any not too diffcult to follow help would be appreciated --thanks [sig][/sig]

 

[dxd]

So that I understand correctly..do you have a Win98 or Dos boot diskette? If not, you will need one to put the system files on the hard drive if you did not format it with the
"/s" switch.

If you have a boot disk and it will not boot to the floppy, first try removing any CD from your CD-Rom drive. I have seen cases where non-bootable CD's will prevent the booting to floppy. If it still will not boot, try a bootable CD and if able to exit out of whatever setup it runs it may put you at a Dos prompt and then you could SYS the C drive.

If all that fails, you need to take a look at the Bios settings (floppy enable/boot enable) and if still no luck...I would either guess a virus or hardware issue.

[sig]<p>Doug<br><a href=mailto:dxd_2000@yahoo.com>dxd_2000@yahoo.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br> [/sig]

 

[andyh]

thanks for the swift reply
i do have a win98 boot disk but this is not being read, i have just tried a bootable cd-rom and no luck either, unfotunately i cant get into the bios now either is this because i enabled hdd s.m.a.r.t. and if so is there anything i can do about it
cheers [sig][/sig]

 

[bugman]

have you tried to remove the cmos battery and then replace to remove any settings in the bios? [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

Can you try your boot disk on another machine. Just so you are confident that it is good.
When you finally get your floppy reading and the cdrom reading all the tools are available to do the reinstall.
I normally put the boot stuff on my hard drive using the dos on the boot disk, then install from the hard drive.
[sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[prime]

Ok, you can't get into CMOS. Award bios, so you'd be looking at the del key, right? Hold that down and then turn the computer on. Keep your finger on it Until you get in. I don't know if that will work, but usually if a system's too fast to get into the bios, if you load the keyboard buffer up with the del key, it should work.

It shouldn't have anything to do with SMART - that's for hard disks - if the hard disks or the BIOS detect anything wrong with the hard disk, the BIOS sends a signal over a network card (if available) to the server to alert the system administrator of an error with the hard disk. Really only useful in corporate network situations. Did you enable Quick Boot? If so, that might be why you can't get in.

Now, concerning your problem, does your system usually seek the floppy drive first before accessing the HDD? If so, you should be fine. If you've got the primary master (C booting first, that's why. you'll need to set your boot sequence to A,C,scsi or A, CDROM, C or the like. I don't think the bios skips the hard drive if it can read the FAT, it will just say invalid system disk.

If you can't get into the BIOS by holding down DEL prematurely, You'll have to open the case. Ah, M2. Your motherboard mightn't have a popout battery. Heres what to do - open the case. look on the motherboard for a button battery - about 2cm diameter. If you find that, gently pop it out. Keep it out for about 3 hours to completely drain the CMOS of any data.
If you can't find a button battery, look for a big tubular battery - about 2cm long and 1cm in diameter. It's soldered on the motherboard. if you got a manual with your motherboard, it will tell you which jumper to change to temporarily drain it.

!!! WARNING !!! If you discharge your CMOS, you'll have to enter the settings again, but usually, the settings in the BIOS will work with any machine.

Once you've drained it, Place the battery back in, or reinable the jumper and boot. It should say CMOS checksum error or something like that, and give you the option to get into setup and change it all. That's how I would do it.

Well, been a bit long winded, but hopefully helpful. be sure to ask about anything you don't understand or anything I've not mentioned.

Hope it's been helpful. [sig]<p>--=Rªhn=--<br><a href=mailto:rahn@rahn.scripterz.org>rahn@rahn.scripterz.org</a><br><a href=

http://rahn.scripterz.org>http://rahn.scripterz.org</a><br>Age

17.<br>
Love networks (especially my own) and tinkering around with my home machines and enjoy a good LAN Party. Program in Delphi, Linux Freak. FEAR THE PENGUIN!!!!!<br>
[/sig]

 

[andyh]

thanks for all the help it gives me something to work on...i will keep you posted

andyh
manchester england [sig][/sig]

 

[andyh]

ok thanks (rahn) i can now get into the cmos/bios i have disabled the smart and i have set the boot sequence to a, c, scsi, i have tested the win98 boot disk on another pc and it seems fine (edfair) is a bootable cd one which would normally autorun? (dxd - doug) in anycase i have tried booting from the a drive again and same problem; the green external light comes on the floppy drive and it makes a grunting noise for about 15 secs then i get the invalid system disk message, i am not very knowledgable but my instinct tells me that it is a similar to the problem i encountered when i was trying to install win98se over win98 and the system crashed, it did not create the windows backup, i then encountered problems when i got to the create start up disk option ( a drive problem ) eventually by skipping create start up disk option and persevering i managed to complete the win98se installation and the a drive problem went away; of course i have since formatted the c drive and the problem reading the a drive has re-appeared --------any easy to follow help appreciated [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

Sounds like a bad floppy drive but can be anything in the floppy read chain. My first step would be to replace the drive.
Although you can install from a bootable cd, I have standardized on only installing from a system booted from a floppy. It insures that the floppy works and that I have a way to get to the cdrom also since I pull the install stuff to the hard drive and install from there.
But this has also forced me to customize the boot floppy to modify the boot menu and add several controller driver sets. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[andyh]

thanks for the reply ( edfair )
i just find it too much of a coincidence that the a drive should only start showing a fault straight after reinstalling windows and again straight after format c: i have had the pc for nearly 2 years ( from new ) and never had a problem with it also it worked fine after i had installed win98se until i formatted is it possible to just completely disable the a drive and somehow still re install?
thanks

[sig][/sig]

 

[dxd]

When was the last time you actually booted from the floppy drive?

Try this, disconnect the hard drive and see if you can boot to the floppy or CD drive. If so, you need to find a way to check the hard drive for a boot sector virus. If your Bios has the feature, you could try a low level format of the drive.


[sig]<p>Doug<br><a href=mailto:dxd_2000@yahoo.com>dxd_2000@yahoo.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br> [/sig]

 

[edfair]

Just making the observation based on your responses to the series of questions. You should be able to simplify the system down to floppy drive only pretty easily to verify that the boot floppy can or can't be read. Start at floppy only, if it boots there connect up the cdrom, and boot again with the cd drivers, then if successful add the hard drive back. In each case you will be loading a DOS, and if the floppy booted on another machine , you can be pretty sure there isn't a virus on it.
When you add the cd, then you should be able to see files on it. Ditto on the hard drive. DOS is the simplest way to check on functionality. When all the hardware is functional under DOS then load the GUI.
There shouldn't be anything that would affect the floppy on anything you've installed. Operative word is shouldn't. But if you have a corrupted install CD, you can corrupt something that will affect floppy read. Same way W9x, W3.x, Wnt, W2k can clobber stuff that will totally lock up a system. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[andyh]

thanks for the replies
the last time i booted from the floppy drive was about 6 weeks ago - no problem (dxd - doug)
i have tried disconnecting the c drive and the cd rom and booting from the floppy ( i take it this is just a case of pulling the cables off )- no luck if the floppy read has been affected is there anything i can do about it ?( edfair)

thanks [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

Pulling cables is fine but you also need to go into the bios and remove the devices or the system may hang looking for them. In fact, just removing the bios entries will accomplish the removal without uncabling.
If the bios is set up correctly for the floppy and the disk itself reads on another machine you have floppy, cable, or controller problem. If controller, you should be able to disable it and add an expansion card controller. But I've found at least a 10 to 1 failure rate of the drive to the controller so this is my strong bias towards drive problem. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[andyh]

thanks for the reply again
ok ive gone into the bios and cant find where you remove the devices i have downloaded the manual from award and still cant fathom it out can you point me in the right direction; also i cant understand that when i change my boot sequence to &quot;c only&quot; i still get the same error message
the error message comes straight after --- verifying DMI pool data.........does this throw any light on it? [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

In CMOS , document your current settings. Then set all 4 drives to none. This will effectively stop them from trying to load.
Look at the floppy setup on the first page. Verify that it is 1.44. (you do have 1.44 HD 3&quot;drive don't you?) Get back to main page, go to second page and verify a,c... or c,a.., either should work and try to read the floppy. You might also want to turn on floppy seek on self test, and make sure drive swap is off. And if you don't see some of these choices it just means you have a different BIOS.
On boot you should banner the bios settings, hear the drive do a step out and in, see the drive light at the same time, then the light goes out, followed shortly by an attempt to bootstrap. If still gives error then you are to floppy failure, or cable failure, or controller failure which is M/B problem. And this is about as much troubleshooting as you can do remotely. My next step would be to swap a different floppy drive in place, then a cable, then a M/B. But that's probably more than you're up to. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[ATCal]

If the disk works in another machine, and the BIOS is set to A: for first boot and it still won't work, it can only be one or more of three possible things:
1. Bad or reversed floppy cable (very likely)
2. Bad floppy drive (likely)
3. Bad floppy controller (not likely)

Rule these out and your problem should be solved.

Hard drive settings should be irrelevant until it gets past the floppy boot. [sig]<p>Al<br><a href=mailto: atc-computing@home.com> atc-computing@home.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br> [/sig]

 

[edfair]

reversed floppy cable will give continuous drive select light. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[kc0bfv]

Yo, take a floppy drive from another computer and switch it in for the current one. Make sure the other drive works first. [sig][/sig]

 

[andyh]

thanks for all the replies
i have just installed a second hand floppy drive from a 486 and eureka its booted WISH I HAD DONE IT SOONER anyway learnt a few things on the way! i am going to do my install this afternoon so i hope the original problem that i caused me to format in the first place has gone -----thanks again [sig][/sig]