Help Me! "invalid System Disk" Problem

[Mivaro]

Originally posted by JmiF@20 March 2003 - 20:47
I'm confused - how is this a hardware issue.

Not that it matters as long as the chap gets it fixed, but I cant see it myself.

yeah, since when is an os hardware?

[Supernatural]

He needed to format his Hard Drive. Hard drives are hardware, right?

[SideSwiped]

Okay, I have just one stupid question about this, if there are multiple drives, are either of these drives set to active??????? I mean, if neither drive is active, the system can't boot from nothing and even the boot disk isn't going to help unless a program is installed and automatically sets an active drive or partition.

[J'Pol]

Originally posted by SideSwiped@21 March 2003 - 00:19
Okay, I have just one stupid question about this, if there are multiple drives, are either of these drives set to active???????  I mean, if neither drive is active, the system can't boot from nothing and even the boot disk isn't going to help unless a program is installed and automatically sets an active drive or partition.

What on earth are you talking about. A system will boot without there even being a hard drive installed, never mind a partition set as active. As long as the floppy, or CD is a boot disk.

There has been no mention of FDISK here. Even if there was the floppy would still boot the PC.

How do you think a system can boot without the hdd having any partitions.

This is the sort of nonsense that annoys me.

[Nightwolf]

He might not even need a boot disk. Some systems can boot from a Windows CD. Then all he'd have to do is run 'Setup' to reinstall.

[leecheskicked]

he's still gonna have to setup the boot option to boot from the cd, if as he says it worked before it looks like he's lost his boot record from c:, even if he installed windows, or somehow transfered his windows folders to d: he would still need to have boot record on c: to tell pc where windows was, tho god knows how he managed that with editing a hell of a lot of dos files, which i doubt was the case, anyway if they've gone to rats that would result in him being locked out.

if he's running xp he should be able to boot from his cd and repair the exisiting installation on d:

but i think for all around ease I've give it up as a bad job, format c: and bang a new os on

[Chilly]

Originally posted by JmiF+20 March 2003 - 23:31--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (JmiF @ 20 March 2003 - 23:31)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin--SideSwiped@21 March 2003 - 00:19
Okay, I have just one stupid question about this, if there are multiple drives, are either of these drives set to active??????? I mean, if neither drive is active, the system can&#39;t boot from nothing and even the boot disk isn&#39;t going to help unless a program is installed and automatically sets an active drive or partition.

What on earth are you talking about. A system will boot without there even being a hard drive installed, never mind a partition set as active. As long as the floppy, or CD is a boot disk.

There has been no mention of FDISK here. Even if there was the floppy would still boot the PC.

How do you think a system can boot without the hdd having any partitions.

This is the sort of nonsense that annoys me.[/b][/quote]
@JmiF, you seem to have a very short fuse, the quote given was a question?

Sometimes you can be arrogant and abrupt.

[imported_QuietSilence!]

i noted that u said its and old comp and that u said u had all the disks(plural)
for the os. are these floppy disks?
if so what os is it?
win 3.1 or win 95 as these are the only versions of windows that came out on floppys

if they are floppys and its win 95 all u got to do is put the first disk in and start the comp to re install the os (and be ready too spend a few hours changing flopys)

if its windows 3.1 or ull need to install dos 6.11 first to do that put the first disk of dos in first and start up the comp(if this is it i wouldnt even bother but its up to u)

also if they came with ur comp when u got it its probly realy old and will not work with windows Xp it might work with win98 if it has a cdrom

also if ur D drive is not a 2nd physacal hard drive then dont run fdisk as u will lose all the info u saved on the D drive (u can run "fdisk /mbr" if the master boot record is mesed up in order to fix it without losing info)

[imported_QuietSilence!]

Originally posted by leecheskicked@21 March 2003 - 12:51
he&#39;s still gonna have to setup the boot option to boot from the cd, if as he says it worked before it looks like he&#39;s lost his boot record from c:, even if he installed windows, or somehow transfered his windows folders to d: he would still need to have boot record on c: to tell pc where windows was, tho god knows how he managed that with editing a hell of a lot of dos files, which i doubt was the case, anyway if they&#39;ve gone to rats that would result in him being locked out.

if he&#39;s running xp he should be able to boot from his cd and repair the exisiting installation on d:

but i think for all around ease I&#39;ve give it up as a bad job, format c: and bang a new os on

no reason to think his MBR(master boot record) is bad. since it said that its not a system disk then it just ant a system disk to make it a system disk all u got to do is format /s if after he trys to format it and it dont work then it may have a bad MBR but that is vary u likly as u cant mess up the MBR just bye deleating files it would ether have to crash or have a program go in and mess it up(like fdisk or a virus)

and to make it boot from the cd u dont need to have a HD ether. if the comp suports boot form cd u go to the bios and set it to try to boot from cd
if there is no sys disk in flopy it trys the hd and if the hd is not sys it trys the cdrom u can set it to try in any order u want

the boot record is not even on the c: drive its on the hard drive sepret from any partision on it whether thers 1 or 20 partisions on it and has nothing to do with the drive boot sequnce

also the boot record dose not tell ur comp where the os is the comp looks for it on the first active partision of the master drive on IDE 0(or flopy or cdrom) if its not a system drive it gives errior this is not a sys drive
even if the os is on another drive the C drive must be a sys drive with a file(or a program called a boot loader) telling where the os is

[leecheskicked]

ok I stand corrected, brain wasn&#39;t quite engaged I meant his system files, which are on C:, not his MBR, I was thinking about files the machine boots from and i suppose i figured he would know what i meant.

And as for booting from CD I meant he would still have to enter the bios and set up 1st boot option to C:

obviously he wont need a HD if he just wants to work in dos&#33; got a nice copy of First Framework if he wants it.