I came home this evening to find that my other computer will not boot. Windows 98 was installed on it, and I do not have a boot disk for it (I’m running XP on this machine). I can get a command prompt using an XP emergency startup disk, but beyond that, running MSCDEX and loading CD drivers does not give me access to the CD-ROM. If I try to access drive C, I get an invalid media type error and a “Fail on INT 24” message. I’ve tried everything I know to do to restore, including FDISKing drive C (which was apparently successful), but I am still unable to get a command prompt on it to reinstall Windows…
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Can you access C: now? Does the computer beep or anything? Have you checked the BIOS Settings?
You could try to boot from a windows 98 CD.
Did you FORMAT after you fdisked your hard drive?
I can get a C: prompt, but anything thereafter is an “Invalid media reading disk” error.
I tried to format before and after the FDISK, both times I got an “Incorrect DOS version” error and FORMAT wouldn’t run.
use ‘format c: /u’ - it will wipe out EVERYTHING on the disk - this turns the disk into a doorstop, but SHOULD allow the re-install of OS and applications (user data is gone)
(this is assuming that the BIOS boot is either C/A or, if A/C, there is not a garbage floppy installed)
LOTS of possiblities here - the more info you can provide, the better -
any reason for the machine to go bad?
are there multiple hard drives? was the operating system on C, or some other drive?
can you get a DOS prompt?
Did you check/retry the BIOS ‘scan for HDD specs’ function?
Nevermind guys, I got it-- turns out the FORMAT.COM file itself was corrupt (!!). Got it all taken care of – reinstalling 98 as I type.
Thanks for your help =)
Although this has been fixed, I thought I should point you to www.bootdisk.com where you can get appropriate boot disks for whatever OS you need. Handy in these kind of situations.