Help with hardcore crash

my computer crashed the other day, now when it boots it never gets to the loading win98 screen, instead (out in dos) it says,
"Please insert bootable media into appropriate drive."

Ok I put the boot disk in and it got to the loading win98 screen, but it never got off of it, I let it sit like that for about two hours while I went to go watch XXX (Phat Movie :) I also hit F1 to enter setup and told it to boot from the hard drive first, that didnt work. Then I told it to boot from the CD drive, thit didnt work either. And also told it to boot from the floppy drive, which gave me the same results as when I fisrt put the boot disk in. I CAN'T get to a DOS PROMPT :( So here are my options as I see them:

1.) Go out and buy an old copy of dos, so I can reinstall that, then Format everything from a dos prompt.

2.) Pull the HD out of that comp and put it in my other one and re set it up on that computer, then (in theroy) it should boot. But i dont know if it will retain the settings off my working computer and not the ones from the broken one.

3.) ????

If anyone can help it would be much appreicated

Thanx

back up your data with another computer, then get a bootable windows cd and reformat

-C

OH YEA...

I forgot to mention that use of the cd-rom is not possible, because the driver for it is conflicting with the controller. This is what caused it to crash in the first place I think. I have a new driver on floppy, yet without being able to access the dos prompt it's as usless as the cd-rom.

Go get a brand new Sledgehammer +1, +5 vs Computers.

Your best bet would probably be to rip your HDD out, and stick into another computer, and see if you can reformat that way.

Z.

take a win98 emergency boot floppy (you can make one by going to control panel, add/remove programs and clicking on the startup disk tab) insert a blank floppy in the drive and click create disk. take this disk and boot your "dead" computer with it. boot the system with either CDROM or without CDROM support then switch to drive D (a ramdrive created by the boot disk and contains diagnostic and repair files). at the D prompt, type SYS C: and hit enter. if you get a message saying system transferred, all is good reboot your pc without the disk and windows "should" boot up, what most likely happened is you lost your command.com, io.sys or msdos.sys file... if any of these files corrupt or get damaged your hard drive will not be bootable anymore. SYS C: replaces these files with copies from the boot disk and allows the hard drive to boot your computer again..

if this doesnt work, then a format and clean install of windows is about your only other option.


Chad Robert
Chaddz Computer Services, Ltd.
Marion, Iowa.