| Author |
Invalid System Disk!
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| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 6:03 am |
| You wanna hear what I'm battling in the computer world now? I am trying to bring back to life a windows 95. A sweet little computer.. so I had to replace the fan and figured it'd need more memory... I thought I'd upgrade it to 95 and be done! yea, right!!!! not in the computer world is anything so easy. I am now fighting "invalid system disk...replace disk and push any key to restart"!!!! You would not believe what I have been thru with this computer! So far I have not had much help from the net. Do you have any idea where to get the system disk? I guess it is different from the boot disk and start up disk. Any ideas? | |
| MistyRing 2003-08-08, 7:09 am |
| no it's not different. it's just asking for a boot disk coz there's no boot sector on the hard drive or it can't find the hard drive.
you can download them. try here www.nu2.nu
of course then you'll have to troubleshoot the problem! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 7:42 am |
| Okay, thanxs for the info... I will check out that site! Wish me luck! I am sooo confused! I don't know why the start up won't work. I guess that would be too easy! | |
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| I would check the cabling for both the floppy drive and the hard drive too. I think if one of the cables is around the wrong way you may get that message - it's been so long since I have seen it that I forget  | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 7:58 am |
| No, the cables are all hooked right. It was all working good till it went down..then it went down with a bang....so I formatted it and figured I'd start all over again..and I ended up here: "invalid system disk" aghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! | |
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| You have a different hard drive you can try in the system? Could be that your hard drive has died. | |
| WPFossil 2003-08-08, 8:22 am |
| Any MS-DOS or Windows 9x system disk will get you going. You'll then need to add a CD-ROM driver to the system disk to access the Set-up CD. Try here for the drivers...
http://www.computerhope.com/cdromd.htm
I'm assuming you a Windows 95 install CD. If you have the Windows 95 on diskettes (a 13 or 28 disk set), disk one is bootable and you can go from there. | |
| jojogun 2003-08-08, 8:29 am |
| I had a problem loading 95 on to a dell 466 i still have not solved the problem! | |
| WPFossil 2003-08-08, 8:32 am |
| By the way, if you have a Windows 98 startup disk, it already has generic CD-ROM drivers on it. You could then install Windows 95 after you boot successfully. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 9:19 am |
| I know all that should work easily but none of it works. I have tried win 95, and win 98 set ups. I have tried boots,and so many downloads but the stupid thing won't take anything! Just the same repeat...invalid system disk..... I formatted my drive c...does this tell you anything? I really messed up this time didn't I! | |
| enforcer 2003-08-08, 9:29 am |
| have you fdisk'd the drive and made the partition active? then format c: /s | |
| mrfixit 2003-08-08, 9:35 am |
| Just a crazy thought, but did you "fdisk" the drive before formatting it? You need to fdisk the drive to create a primary partition and then format a file system on that partition. Then you should be able to install Win95. Just a thought. | |
| mrfixit 2003-08-08, 9:36 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by enforcer
have you fdisk'd the drive and made the partition active? then format c: /s
Beat me out by seconds!  (Well, actually minutes, but whose counting?)
Great minds think alike!  | |
| WPFossil 2003-08-08, 9:44 am |
| Go into the BIOS and make sure the floppy is at the top of the boot order. If it looks for the hard drive to boot first, you'll get the "invalid system disk" message because there's no OS on the hard drive. There's also the chance that the floppy drive is bad. | |
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| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 3:42 pm |
| I thought fdisk and formatting were basically the same...okay, so now how can I get back in there to fdisk it? Is there a place on the web I can download fdisk?
I think my floppy is okay... pretty sure anyway! It just could be the fdisk since I hadn't done that one. Remember, any key I touch only brings up more lines of "invalid sys....."
I really do appreciate all of you helping me...maybe I gotta chance yet!! I know alone, this things got me licked. | |
| mrfixit 2003-08-08, 3:46 pm |
| Someone posted this on another forum a few days back, but try here for a good bootdisk. Should include fdisk.
Hope it helps!
http://www.bootdisk.com/ | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 3:50 pm |
| Thanks...I'm on my way -----------> | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 4:19 pm |
| Nope! Nadda! Nill! Wouldn't take it either! Thanks for the try...it was a good idea...So back to the fdisk idea..do you know how to get me back in there to fdisk it?  | |
| Paisleyskye 2003-08-08, 4:35 pm |
| Mary Beth,
Trust me, I understand PC frustration. Let's take a stab at this together. You know where you went to format it - just go back there, but instead of format, at the command prompt type Fdisk. Then when you are faced with the options, choose to delete the partition. Then, after you've completely deleted the partition choose to create a primary DOS partition. Then after you've created the primary DOS partition, choose to make it active. After making it active, exit Fdisk, and reboot your computer (you must reboot). When your computer starts back up, reformat the disk.
If this doesn't work, I'll walk you through a debugging scrip through chat that will cure whatever ails your machine. | |
| WPFossil 2003-08-08, 4:36 pm |
| No boot disks work at all?
Are you sure the floppy disk is at the top of the boot order in the BIOS? If you can't boot from several different floppies, either the boot order is wrong or the floppy drive or drive controller is bad (or not plugged in correctly).
Did you look in the BIOS/CMOS setup? | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 6:23 pm |
| Hi ya Paisley...thanks for the help... I can't do what you suggested though cause the only thing that comes up on the screen is row after row of "invalid system disk...replace disk and push any key to continue" or something similar to that....any key i touch produces more rows of that nonsence!... now i can get to some options but haven't figured out what to do with those yet..they won't take me anywhere..just allow me to change y or n answers.... someone mentioned drivers to me... do you figure that might be the problem? all I did was formatted my c drive...waaaa laaaaaa presto chango....junko! of course before that I was redownloading 95 when the box came up saying I made an illigal operation and shut me down..that was the beginning of my nitemare! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 6:27 pm |
| Hey Fossil, you could have hit on it.... That part I was just telling Paisley about has that stuff in it...I didn't know the order it should be in. I just pushed the yes, or no to what sounded right. Can you tell me the correct order? I will try that one... Man, I hope that is it! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 8:03 pm |
| Hey Fossil, I took a couple pictures of what I'm dealing with. Maybe if you'd take a look for me you'd know what I'm doing wrong huh? I'll send them okay.... | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 8:07 pm |
| I'm afraid you can't see them too well. Can you make it out? | |
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| Hey MaryBeth
OK - that shows your machine wanting to boot to the Hard Drive first & floppy second. What you need to to is follow the instructions on the right of the screen to move the floppy up the boot order to first boot device. Then you will be able to fdisk/format etc. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-08, 9:08 pm |
| Russ...you da man! hahaha thank you thank you thank you thank you...gotta go and try it out....i'll let you know...oh and...thank you!  | |
| WPFossil 2003-08-08, 9:35 pm |
| Just saw your screen shots. Russ is right in what he told you. Let us know how it works out! | |
| RussS 2003-08-08, 11:09 pm |
| Nah - WPFossil first mentioned boot order, and I just viewed your screenshot and suggested your next course of action. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-09, 8:36 am |
| Fossil, Russ, you are both terrific. I appreciate everything you've helped me with. Okay, so now my boot order is right...so it should take the win95 or 98, whatever I decide to do now right? I'll let you know as soon as I get to it... and THANKS THANKS THANKS | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-09, 12:31 pm |
| Okay, here's what I got now... I put the cd-rom in the first boot order and the floppy in second...the hard drive third...so now when i boot up it says cd-not found, floppy not found.... ido(or whatever it says that means hard drive) ok, but it won't boot up! I am inclosing another pic....cut the head off but like I said, the cd rom is in the first order... what am I doing wrong now? I am so in over my head it's not funny! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-09, 12:36 pm |
| Here's the pic-----------> | |
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| You probably do not have a bootable CD. Go
1. floppy
2. CD ROM
3. Hard Drive
Boot with the floppy - use fdisk to remove all partitions and to then recreate them (remembering to restart)- then format the drive - then run setup | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-09, 8:10 pm |
| I did everything like you told me. I put floppy 1st, cd 2ed...etc...still no go... I got another picture for you. This is bothering me cause of what the Pri Master, and the rest seem odd. I have no idea how all my settings could of got thrown off like that. How's it look to you? Everything normal? | |
| WPFossil 2003-08-09, 8:26 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by Paisleyskye
Mary Beth,
Trust me, I understand PC frustration. Let's take a stab at this together. You know where you went to format it - just go back there, but instead of format, at the command prompt type Fdisk. Then when you are faced with the options, choose to delete the partition. Then, after you've completely deleted the partition choose to create a primary DOS partition. Then after you've created the primary DOS partition, choose to make it active. After making it active, exit Fdisk, and reboot your computer (you must reboot). When your computer starts back up, reformat the disk.
If this doesn't work, I'll walk you through a debugging scrip through chat that will cure whatever ails your machine.
Why not take Paisley up on her offer to walk you through in chat? She really knows her stuff. It sounds like you need one-on-one help.
I'm on vacation right now, checking my e-mail from the shore or I'd try to put more into this. Hope it works out for you! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-09, 8:32 pm |
| Thanks for the offer Fossil but my computer is about 40 feet away from the computer I'm working with. I hadn't realized she offered chat help...I'm new to this too I guess. Thanks for letting me know though....see, you teach me something new even from vacation! Thanks again! Try not to give up on me okay..I am crazy about computers and learning more about them is just a thrill to me. The deeper we get into them, the more interested I get...maybe I'm crazy huh? | |
| Paisleyskye 2003-08-09, 8:34 pm |
| Yes, mary-beth, if you want to take me up on the chat thing, I'd be happy to walk you through it. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-09, 8:40 pm |
| Sure Paisley, tell me how | |
| Paisleyskye 2003-08-09, 9:33 pm |
| Do you have MSN, AOL, Yahoo or ICQ messenger? I have all four, so if you let me know which one you have, we'll be off to the races. | |
| princessangry 2003-08-10, 9:05 am |
| dont even bother with windows if you only got 32 MB of ram or below... Linux is a much safer choice. Mine is cnfigured to use 20MB right now and it even loads extra into the kernel. Linux can be configured to only use as little as 2MB ram or less. It is also faster. Windows source is so bloated. very. If you put linux in the comp youd run a whole lot faster than win95. Linux does take some extra learing, but there's a crapload of documentation on it and it tells you everything... read it and you will become an expert. I have almost got linux figured out. All I need to learn is web admin stuff..... and a tad others.
tesla coil!! down below!!! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-10, 9:12 am |
| Thanks for the info. I have to admit I never heard of Linux. I have something new to learn now don't I. I know computers never work as fast as I wish they would. I see little difference between the win95 and newer ones...so Linux does sound real good... I'll check it out. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-10, 9:13 am |
| Paisley, I'd like to work on msn..how about you? | |
| princessangry 2003-08-10, 9:37 am |
| marybeth......
some things to know about linux.... there are different distributions out made by different people/companies. each one varies, so choose one that will meet your needs as well as your price range. some dist. are even free! all you gotta do is download the .iso files and burn them onto cd, then install as you nornally would. some offer free cds. redhat is the most commercialized distrubution of linux. they have alot of marketing about it. I use debian, a much less comercialized dist. of linux. some have different operations, some dont. some have different utlities supplied with them.. I'd reserch this in depth before choosing which distro. to go by. I hope my recommendations are helpful. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-10, 9:42 am |
| You are verrrrry helpful...teach me more...teach me more....I love it! | |
| Paisleyskye 2003-08-10, 11:49 am |
| msn sounds good to me. My msn is traceyrosenblath@hotmai
l.com - I'll be online all day, so all you have to do is message me and we'll take care of this. If you have any trouble, just let me know what your msn id is, and I'll find you. | |
| princessangry 2003-08-10, 1:40 pm |
| linux is mostly command line driven and it uses "terminals" kinda of like command prompt on windows. you wouldnt belive this..... but there can be over 200 of those terminals on a linux machine! and most of linux's operations are controlled with the terminal.
go to http://www.debian.org to find more about this distribution of linux!
I hope this helps!!  | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-10, 1:49 pm |
| okay princess...you are a genius! great website you gave me...thanks I appreciate it. I will read into it more later but I wanted to say thanks now... | |
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| RomeoMike 2003-08-10, 9:04 pm |
| In the interest of being thorough, and having done and supervised my fair share of 9X installs, here goes:
0. Disable Quick Post, at least until you're sure your RAM is good.
1. In one of your screen shots, you have a user-installed 2.1GB hard drive. Has that always been the case? If there's a mismatch between what the BIOS says the HD parameters are, and what the OS thinks they are, that's one potential cause of the "invalid system disk" message.
1a. Basic boot flow: BIOS is told to go to the hard drive. It finds the Master Boot Record, loads its code, and is directed to find the active partition. Once it's on the active partition, the boot code finds a volume boot record, which it loads and in turn tries to load IO.SYS. Failure to find or load this file is another source of the "invalid system disk" message.
2. General disk setup includes the physical cabling (power and data), proper CMOS detection, partitioning (with FDISK in your case), setting your primary partition active, rebooting the computer, then formatting the hard drive, then loading the OS. Any missed step leaves you dead in the water.
3. As has been pointed out quite well by others already, most 9X CDs are not bootable, and require a suitable boot floppy with the real-mode CD drivers to make them usable.
Hope this helps. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-10, 10:11 pm |
| Okayyyyyy Mike! Now that is a lot to think about. I guess I'll have to take that one step at a time. I know I have the boot order correct now...so it is trying to boot from the floppy, and I am using a bootable floppy (one that I downloaded from the net)...so I will have to trace the rest you mentioned... Thanks a bunch for your wisdom...I will try to put it to use! I am pretty sure my ram is good. it was working fine until it went with "you made an illigal opperation and have to shut down.." it came back messed up. I suspect my bios is off. Thanks for the info! Your knowledge is priceless. | |
| kurtcolucci 2003-08-11, 1:04 pm |
| Remember....like we all learned in the beginning....don't overlook the basics.I know you already tried, but double check the hardware connections. (cabling,controller,connector alignment).Sure, it's basic but we all tend to overlook the bacics at times. Swap the drive with a known working one. Check your drive in a known working box. If the basics still fail to provide a solution....get a hammer....just kidding.Get a 95 startup disk.
If you don't have another 95 build handy....(who does?) you will need to get one at
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm[/URL]
You can choose the version you will need.
Good luck | |
| CyberDude 2003-08-11, 3:24 pm |
| I am now receiving the same error message on my 98 laptop.
It was configured to boot from the HDD first, but ever since these messages, it first seeks out the floppy.
I have booted to floppy, and have been able to access and list the root of C:
I have only been able to CD into the Windows directory, but no others.
I cannot list inside this directory.
I have tried FDISK /MBR, but to no avail.
I have finally booted from floppy again, with CD-ROM support, and started the 98 install, to reinstall the OS, but still save the data.
Unfortnately, it runs SCANDISK beforehand, which discovered loads of bad files, and gave an option to fix them.
After fixing them, and then having to reboot because it froze, I found myself in a loop of fixing files and rebooting.
This lasted for about 8hrs, until finally at 71% of the scan, it just hung no matter what I did.
I need the data thats on the HDD (no back up I'm afraid (other story = wife)).
Is there any way of getting access to the data, or is it lost forever?
Are there any file recovery programs that run in DOS? | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-11, 4:47 pm |
| Kurt, everything was working right in the beginning...at least the connections that is.(I think)! It went hay wire on me when I was trying to redownload win95 because of a box coming up saying I committed an illegal operation and would shut the whole thing down! Instead of formatting it to begin with, I tried to just put the win95 over the old and right in the middle of the smooth download...that stupid box came up and shut me down.... that is where my nitemare began! I have no idea how that did it, but it messed up all my settings. Now I am trying to find out my orignal settings. You still think it could be my connections? Thanks for your time Kurt. I appreciate your opinion. | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-11, 4:50 pm |
| Hey Dude, you are up to your ears in mess like I am. Good luck. I have now wrote to my motherboard company asking for help...maybe that would help you? I know we are in a room with a big bunch of terrific intelligent people who love computers like we do. If they can't help us, no one can... | |
| mrfixit 2003-08-11, 5:14 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by CyberDude
Are there any file recovery programs that run in DOS?
Do you have a second machine? You can attach you laptop HD to a desktop, if you have one, via a special adapter. Don't know where you would get one over there. As for recovery software, I'll check around, have'nt had to use any myself lately. Good luck. | |
| princessangry 2003-08-11, 5:18 pm |
| ""Do you have a second machine? You can attach you laptop HD to a desktop, if you have one, via a special adapter. Don't know where you would get one over there. As for recovery software, I'll check around, have'nt had to use any myself lately. Good luck.""
I think www.tigerdirect.com has some of those adapters... they've got everything! and for real cheap too.... | |
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| CyberDude - if you have another machine available the easiest thing to do would be to attach your old drive as slave and drag all of your stuff off from there. That is of course if it is not totally screwed.
When sorting clients systems I use OnTrack Easy Recovery Professional. I must admit that I have even removed the platter once or twice and installed it in a matching drive to access mission critical data for a 1 off retrieval. | |
| RomeoMike 2003-08-11, 9:22 pm |
| Dear Cyberdude:
I suspect a safer approach would have been to try sys c: from your boot floppy, as opposed to starting out with FDISK /MBR.
If you want to give 98 another try,
you can bypass the Scandisk (and probably the Registry check as well) with
setup /is /nr
As far as DOS-based recovery products go, something I bought, but never had to use, was Powerquest's Lost and Found.
Hope this helps. | |
| princessangry 2003-08-11, 9:49 pm |
| id format and lod contents to RAM drive... easiest and best way to get it running. | |
| CyberDude 2003-08-12, 2:17 am |
| Thanks guys, for all of the advice. I have purely forgotten aout sys C:, damn. Will try it though, just in case it may work still.
One of my colleagues has one of these adapter cables, so I will be trying to access the HDD that way as well.
I am investigating the PQ info.
Bypassing scandisk and the reg, is one I will try as well.
___________
PrincessAngry, if I formatted the HDD then my data would be lost, so I could not load the contents into RAM. | |
| princessangry 2003-08-12, 2:53 am |
| no!! I meant loding the contents from a system floppy disk into the RAM drive!!!! silly!!!! | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-15, 8:46 am |
| Hi Guys! I have missed you all! I have came down with the virus in both my new machines!!! I got this one up and running but now I have a new problem with that invalid system disk! My other new machine came back with that after I downloaded some new updates! I went to restart it (normal right?)and that is what it came back on with! Now does anyone have an explanation to that one? I can restore on that one except I can't get the page to move off of the black background and "invalid system disk" reading! Now what? | |
| MaryBeth 2003-08-15, 1:39 pm |
| Fixed it! My new machines are up and running again..now to the old problem. I got a couple leads to check out (as soon as I have time....) so again, thanks for all your help. You guys are terrific... Hey, where did Paisley go? |
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