Unable to boot from any drive on laptop

[Glenn]

Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive I
place first in the boot sequence, the following message
always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any key
when ready.
Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
message. Does anyone have any recommendations or diagnoses?
I thank you in advance.

[Jeff Richards]

If you can boot to the W98 boot floppy using another machine then the best
guess would be that the floppy disk drive on the Gateway is not working.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Glenn" > wrote in message
...
> Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
> attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive I
> place first in the boot sequence, the following message
> always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any key
> when ready.
> Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
> boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
> w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
> utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
> message. Does anyone have any recommendations or diagnoses?
> I thank you in advance.

[Glenn]

Jeff,
Thank you for your response. Does this mean that my CDROM
drive is bad as well, given that I cannot boot from a
bootable CD?
>-----Original Message-----
>If you can boot to the W98 boot floppy using another
machine then the best
>guess would be that the floppy disk drive on the Gateway
is not working.
>--
>Jeff Richards
>MS MVP (DTS)
>"Glenn" > wrote in
message
...
>> Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
>> attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive
I
>> place first in the boot sequence, the following message
>> always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any
key
>> when ready.
>> Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
>> boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
>> w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
>> utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
>> message. Does anyone have any recommendations or
diagnoses?
>> I thank you in advance.
>
>
>.
>

[Jeff Richards]

If you have confirmed that the floppy disk and the CD are both bootable by
testing on another machine, then the only other possibility I can think of
is that the machine is ignoring the BIOS instruction for boot device
sequence, and that seems to me a much less likely possibility than that the
drives have failed, even though both drives failing is itself fairly
unlikely (or unlucky).
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Glenn" > wrote in message
...
> Jeff,
> Thank you for your response. Does this mean that my CDROM
> drive is bad as well, given that I cannot boot from a
> bootable CD?
>>-----Original Message-----
>>If you can boot to the W98 boot floppy using another
> machine then the best
>>guess would be that the floppy disk drive on the Gateway
> is not working.
>>--
>>Jeff Richards
>>MS MVP (DTS)
>>"Glenn" > wrote in
> message
...
>>> Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
>>> attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive
> I
>>> place first in the boot sequence, the following message
>>> always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any
> key
>>> when ready.
>>> Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
>>> boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
>>> w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
>>> utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
>>> message. Does anyone have any recommendations or
> diagnoses?
>>> I thank you in advance.
>>
>>
>>.
>>