Need comp Fix help

[autopilot]

I found my sisters old desktop comp (some shitty p100 ) and I wanted to get it going just to use car ed with it (which always freezes up my usual laptop while im making shit.. its always been like that, its not that big a deal to me, but its annoying having to save my work any time I do any little progress, not to mention having to power off my comp while its running a lot just isnt good for it).. anyways when I boot it up it just spits out the error "invalid system disc, press any key blah blah blah" there aint no disc in the floppy drive, I believe it has windows 95 on it, as i found a win 95cd by it, but ive got no 95 boot discs....

[TomeX]

Unplug the Floppy Drive, and the CD-ROM drive, if there is any Maybe one of the drives gone wild...

[Buzz]

or set it to boot from the harddrive and not look at the floppy

[TomeX]

Exactly...

[Powdered Toast MAAAN!!]

Or just make a win 95 boot disk! www.bootdisk.com

[autopilot]

I tried that boot disc site.. when i pop it in, it still says invalid..

So I unhooked the floppy and cd drive and changed the sequence.. still getting that damn error!

So i guess maybe the HDs bitched?

[Beast]

If it says 'boot from disk failed', then yes, the hard disk is fried. Invalid system disc is just odd if you dont have a floppy in the fdd, not to even mention that you removed the fdd.

However, you could check the bios and check the boot devices - maybe someone was tinkering around in the bios and killed the hdd off completely. Also check the cables that are connected to the hdd, make sure you've got both the IDE and the power cables hooked up.

B.

[Deep_Blue]

A lot of the older systems just said "invalid system disk" if the HDD had no OS on it-like if it was corrupted or formatted.

Ya usually only see "boot disk failure" if the HD hardware doesn't respond to the bios driver. (As in the case of bad HD bearings keeping it from reaching the correct speed or a HDD controller problem.-I'd look for a partially unplugged IDE cable at either the HDD or the mainboard-sometimes they can be jarred loose if the unit has been bumped around a lot).

Another thing that used to cause this was a head crash-the heads actually hitting the HDD media causing physical damage-If they crashed in sector 0 Where some of them parked the heads) then it's a goner fer sure.

Usually "boot disk failure" means the controller can't read the physical drive.

"Invalid system disk" means the OS is missing in whole or part, but the disk will prolly be OK after a repartition/reformat and a fresh OS reload.

[autopilot]

I aint getting any boot system error, just the invalid system disc, Im thinking a cable probably coulda been jarred, as the computer was shipped through the mail here from some relative, I'll have to take a look in there, thanks for the help.

[TheJabMan]

Question... is it a Compaq, IBM, or HP? They all cover shit up in the startup, taking some guesswork to get to the boot menu. F8 should bring you there, or F1 if it gives you that lil blurb after the splash screen goes off... that's a bad...everything...

I think I'm trying to say, I was trying to fix up an HP, that would freeze when it hit windows, formatted it, then it would tell me It couldent find the system disk... now the thing is I used a win98 disk to get it to format, but after the format, the settings were still fine in setup obviousy, but it wouldent read the disk, kept saying it was an invalid system disk. This didn't help, but it's good typing practice?

[TTR]

Ive run CarEd on a pentium 166mhz, and im telling you...it works but hell, slow as crap!

[Beast]

D_B has a point, I completely overlooked the fact that it's an old machine. My suggestion would be to delete all the partitions, reformat the disk and then repartition it - if it happens to be okay. If it's dead, no use laying to waste. Find the tallest building close to you, and throw it over, just make sure no people are around - that thing could kill someone if it lands on their head.

I once threw over a hard disk from the 17th floor. Made a nice little crater when it landed. And the platters (if you manage to actualy open it) make nice clocks.

B.

[C2 Scientist]

Haha.

[Kitteh]

I think there's some game i remember seeing in a magazine where you could drop stuff out buildings, it had a mesh deformation system and shit fell off the parts, like you could take a Dell and throw it from whatever story you want onto a sidwalk and you got several camera angles and replays. I never played it though. I only saw screenshots in the mag, if i remember correctly it was some preview copy the mag got and i never heard anything else about it so i dont know. and i completely forget the damn name.