"insert system diskette" error (1 Viewer)

[juggernaut]

ahh yeh i just knocked over one of my computers.. was quite a hard fall haha.. anyways, now it wont start up..

the error message i receive is "insert system diskette and press enter to reboot"

system: p2 400
os; windows me

pleaseeee dont tell me it reformatted.. ill cry

 

[asdf]

looks like one of the h/drive plugs came off. Open your comp and check.

 

[juggernaut]

yesssssssss please god please
where abouts am i looking.. i got no idea..

 

[J0n]

Originally posted by juggernaut
yesssssssss please god please
where abouts am i looking.. i got no idea..

If the problem is what asdf said, if your computer is a normal tower setup, when you open your computer, you should look to where your CD drives are, and above, underneath, or below them there should be your harddrive/s(if you don't know what one looks like, search google ) - then you could just check that there are two plugs going to [each of] your harddrive/s (a ribbon kind of one and one with different coloured wires- black, yellow and red) - if there is, just push them in a bit tighter to make sure they are plugged in properly.

 

[juggernaut]

yep yep i see it thanks jon

 

[juggernaut]

looks all pushed in to me.. except the ribbon, thats difficult to tell

hmm still said it

 

[asdf]

My guess would be you damaged ure h/drive when u droped it! You can try to reformat i guess....

 

[sunny]

Find someone with say a win98 CD, boot with the CD, and run scandisk. Find out if your hdd is damaged that way.

 

[Winston]

Seeing you PM'ed me, i'll post my last response... Follow what they all said above, and mainly check if your HDD is even detected, it should say what's your Primary Drive during the POST screen... if it says no drive detected or just N/A, there's a high chance something happened to your HDD.

 

[santaslayer]

no...dosnt it mean that u have a floppy in ur FDD when ur booting ur computer?
there shouldnt be any floppys in ur FDD whilst booting

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by santaslayer
no...dosnt it mean that u have a floppy in ur FDD when ur booting ur computer?
there shouldnt be any floppys in ur FDD whilst booting

We're all assuming he would of checked that already.

 

[juggernaut]

my harddrive is detected in the bios though

 

[sunny]

If its detected, that says all the physical connections to the disk are fine. If it doesn't make any noises you've heard before, then thats also good.

http://www.drd.dyndns.org/softlib/bootdisks/wbootess.exe

This program will create a windows boot disk for you, with some useful utilities. Including scandisk. Give it a go, and see if scandisk is able to find any errors on your drive.

If scandisk doesn't work at all, try this program:
http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

It will give you a list of the partitions on your hard disk - if you don't see your old windows partition there, its a good chance the partition is dead altogether in which case you will have to format.

 

[juggernaut]

yeh i got the normal boot disk i found and booted with that.. it
takes me to the a: drive (after selecting boot with no cd-support)

ive typed in scandisk /all at the a prompt aswell.. the harddrive is there, working fine etc.

so yeh.. how do i start up!?!

 

[sunny]

It sounds like the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the hard disk might be damaged.

When the computer boots up, the computer is programmed to look at the hard disk's MBR, which gives instructions to the computer on where to find the operating system.

To try and fix the MBR, boot with the win98 boot disk, and run fdisk /mbr

 

[juggernaut]

yeh that did nothing..

i can get into the c: dir.. everythings there.. maybe a file from that?? hah fuck i dunno

 

[J0n]

What about re-installing windows??

 

[sunny]

Originally posted by juggernaut
pleaseeee dont tell me it reformatted.. ill cry

Check if you have a boot.ini in c:\

If you don't want to do anymore detective work I would suggest formatting as well.

 

[J0n]

You don't have to format to re-install windows do you?

 

[juggernaut]

i really cant format.. i have alot of yr 12 stuff on there
not to mention my music!!!!!!!!!!!