Pheww!! Please Help!!

[Madboy]

Just got through a few painful hours of formatting, tried copying Boot disk files to C: via:

A:\*.*C:

Which errored, took me half an hour to realise there should of been a space here:

A:\*.* C:

or something like that. ANyway, AOL is screwing up here big time, but thats not the problem. The problem is everytime i go to boot the pc it asks for my frigging Boot Disk, cant i load it off the C drive like normal computers do?

Cheers, thank you all.

BTW PC_Madness, im not gone yet.....my Windows 98 Setup disk kept failing.

[visualAd]

What were you trying to do? I was under the impression you were reinstalling you OS as you said you wanted to re-format.

[Madboy]

I was/did. I needed to copy autoexec.bat and other files to the C: (after i removed and formatted partitions). I needed to do this for CD support.

Now if i start the pc without my disk it comes to a menu saying:

1) Start with CD support
2) Start without CD support
3) View Help

If i click say option 1, it asks for my Windows Start up disk (boot disk), in which then it has to load. The point is, it should load up without approaching that menu, and without asking for my boot disk.

I looked in the BIOS, but not sure what to look for i got confused and lost.

Any help appreciated thanks.

[visualAd]

If you want to reinstall the whole lot then put the boot disk in and select to start with CD support.

When you get the DOS prompt type D:\steup.exe. That should start the Windows installer.

[Madboy]

I have it working, my pc is running now, i only have one pc anyway, so this is the only internet connection i have.

The problem is, if i were to restart now. It would show that menu above, and prompt for a Boot Disk. Forget i formatted the pc, say this was a new problem. It seems that Windows searches for boot up files off a Boot disk first, shouldnt my C: be the Primary slave to run Windows off, then Boot disk?

[SLH]

Restart your computer and go into the bios. You may need to change your 'boot order' (something like that).

That may be the problem, but i'm not sure.

[Madboy]

Originally posted by SLH
Restart your computer and go into the bios. You may need to change your 'boot order' (something like that).

That may be the problem, but i'm not sure.

YES, i think thats what i need to do. But i dont know what to do there. Please Help

[SLH]

It varies depending on your bios. See if you can find something similar to 'boot order', it'll be a list of a few drives that it looks for a boot sector on. Post what it is set at currently.

[Madboy]

OK, i found it and changed the order too

1) SCSI (or something)
2) Floppy
3) CD-ROM

However it still insists on Boot Disk, should option 1 be something other than SCSI, there were tons of options such as IDE(0), IDE(1), IDE(2) and loads more.

Help appreciated.

[SLH]

Is you harddisk a SCSI? If not then something's wrong. The reason it's asking for a boot disk is because it can't find one in any of those 3 options.

I'd have thought that you C drive would be one of the options, but i guess it's different for your bios.

The general order you want is something like Floppy, CD-ROM, HardDisk. It might be something to do with the IDE(#) options but i'm not too sure.

[Madboy]

Apparantly my BIOS may be corrupt in which i have to format again

Did i need to install anything, since the format i have only installed:

Graphics Card
Sound Drivers
Modem
Printer
MS Office 2000

Theres a big box here called:

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY MAINBOARD - ALi, Sis, VIA CHIPSET SERIES

I dont know what it is, do i install a BIOS off this or something? Because i remember when i installed Win98SE it asked to install something from my Windows disk (couldnt find the file), so i cancelled. I hope im not having to format again

[SLH]

The bios is stored on the mainboard (i think), not the harddisk, so if all was well before the format then the bios should be fine after the format.

What makes you think your bios is corrupt - if it was i doubt you'd be able to use your computer at all.

How are you getting into windows at the moment? I'm not sure but i think you have to set an option when you format to make the harddisk bootable (havn't formatted in ages though).

[visualAd]

You've most probably corrupted your Master Boot Record. You said something about copying boot files over to your hard disk. If you have overwritten what was already there then you'll need to use the boot disk to boot up your computer each time you start.

You could try and repair your MBR. Do the following at the DOS prompt from the boot disk:

A:\>fdisk /mbr
A:\>Scandisk C:
A:\>Sys C:

That should restore your MBR and boot files.

Rembmber to keep a backup cos things can get messy if theres a problem when writing to the MBR.

[Madboy]

Do all 3, or try one at a time?

[visualAd]

Do all three. Scandisk will check for erros on the drive and Sys will copy over the required system files.

[Madboy]

Originally posted by visualAd
Rembmber to keep a backup cos things can get messy if theres a problem when writing to the MBR.

Backup what?

[visualAd]

Any data you don't want to lose.

P.S: You should leave your boot order as it was before. Becuase it was working:

: A, CDROM, IDE 0

Will case the BIOS to search for an MBR on each of those devices in that order and boots from the device it finds the MBR on first.

[Madboy]

From the command prompt

A:>

I typed

fdisk /mbr

but it did nothing, and i still need to use the boot disk

[visualAd]

You have to restart the computer with the boot disk. It won't work while Windows is running. You also need to change to C: first:

A:\> C:
C:\>fdisk /mbr