I have a friend whose 14 year old son deleted some files off their Win95 computer. Well whatever he deleted was rather important, because now the computer won't boot. It was bringing up the error message "invalid system disk".


I had a win95 start up floppy, so I booted to that, typed at the A promt:


A:> sys C:


Now it will boot to the C prompt but not to Windows. I read on the internet that you can type in a command at the A prompt to load windows (I think it was cd Windows, then Win, something like that ) but that didn't work.


Then I tried to look at the msdod.sys file by typing in "attrib -h -r -s msdos.sys", and I got "incorrect DOS version".


My friend said I could just install win98, he didn't care about losing any data, but the computer is not recognizing the CD-ROM drive. When I try to run setup, it keeps saying "incorrect drive specification".


So I borrowed a DOS start up disc from someone I know, which has a generic cd-rom driver on it, and tried to install Win98 from the CD, but I get the same thing, "Incorrect drive specification". I don't know what to do now. His computer is really old. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would really appreciate it, thanks.

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Try downloading some of the utilities and tools from bootdisk.com. They should help you.

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You should be able to use a 98 startup disk on a win95 machine. Your problem is probably a missing IO.sys file, so from the 98 startup disk you can copy the IO.sys over to your hard drive, that should do the trick.

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Does your bios/cmos recognize your harddrive and cdrom?

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The computer doesn't support booting to the CD Rom, I checked in BIOS and it's not one of the options. I did find the Win98 boot disk that goes with the Win98 CD that I have, so I'm going to try that tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for all your suggestions.

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sys c: did not fix your problem as it does not boot into the gui. did you try going into windows folder via your win95 dos prompt and typing win?

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if all attempts fail, reinstall win9x upper the old win9x installation. win9x preserve all settings, documments and configurations. nothing to worry about.


boot with a boot diskete like the win98 boot disk.

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...hmm you might go in DOs and check the directory of the Windows folder...to make sure there are no important fiels missing...in which case you can extract them into it...or at least attempt to...

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I did switch to the Windows directory and type WIN but that didn't work. I can't remember what the error message was though. File not found or something like that.

No worries though, because I ended up finding the boot diskette that came with the Win98 Cd, so I booted to that and was able to install Win98 from the CD.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions!

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quote:

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Originally posted by tigerbalm
I did switch to the Windows directory and type WIN but that didn't work. I can't remember what the error message was though. File not found or something like that.

No worries though, because I ended up finding the boot diskette that came with the Win98 Cd, so I booted to that and was able to install Win98 from the CD.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions!

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a best practice is boot with a boot disk, copy all cabs to the hard disk and install from the hd. the installation is more fastest and you preserve the cabs for future installation of packages and software.

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Alex
alexisgarcia72@hotmail.com
Cuban in Mexico
www.cm2gj.com

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