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uuberbob
May 23rd 04, 04:05 AM
My son has an old comp with Me ,he recently moved and now
when he starts up he gets a " Invalid system Disk "
message. I have tried to help him reboot using different
methods from the windows help web site and we dont get
anywhere.I have to talk to him long distance ,which
doesnt help much. what does the " invalid system disk "
mean??? any help is apreciated

heirloom
May 23rd 04, 04:22 AM
First thing that comes to mind is a disk left in the A:\ or CD-ROM drive.
If that is not the case, have you tried booting with the Emergency Boot
Disk?? If he doesn't have one, he can use another computer and download one
from www.bootdisk.com .
Heirloom, old and maybe too obvious


"uuberbob" > wrote in message
...
> My son has an old comp with Me ,he recently moved and now
> when he starts up he gets a " Invalid system Disk "
> message. I have tried to help him reboot using different
> methods from the windows help web site and we dont get
> anywhere.I have to talk to him long distance ,which
> doesnt help much. what does the " invalid system disk "
> mean??? any help is apreciated

Noel Paton
May 23rd 04, 09:12 AM
The following are possibilities (no particular order)
1) a virus
2) hardware problems
3) floppy in drive A: - or bootable CD in drive , with no OS on it.

Most likely, since you say he's just moved, is that there are hardware
problems - a loose cable immediately comes to mind
Open the case and reseat all the cables in their sockets - and try again. If
the error message changes, or goes away, then that possibly the cause, and
you need to isolate it to a particular junction, and clean that.

If the error message remains, try booting with an ME floppy - if he hasn;t
got one, download the diskmaker from www.bootdisk.com (the OEM ME one), and
use that to boot the system (may need to change the boot order in the BIOS
first, if the error still comes up)

Once booted to option 2 or 3 (with or without CD Support) type the
following command

FDISK /STATUS

what does it report??

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2004, Win9x)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/millsrpch.htm

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's
or
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2001/Mar01/Mar27pmvp.asp
"uuberbob" > wrote in message
...
> My son has an old comp with Me ,he recently moved and now
> when he starts up he gets a " Invalid system Disk "
> message. I have tried to help him reboot using different
> methods from the windows help web site and we dont get
> anywhere.I have to talk to him long distance ,which
> doesnt help much. what does the " invalid system disk "
> mean??? any help is apreciated