Non-system Disk Or Disk Error

holy S*** dude thanks, it booted farther than it has, but it stops at a promt that says C:// or whatever, it says something about atapi cd rom...

 

Your welcome!

Now just for giggles, disconnect the CD-ROM and boot it back up, see what happens

 

disconnect...the..............i'm an idiot....it's not plug and play..or do you just mean uninstall it?....sorry about the confusion..not gettin much sleep lately

edit: i'll be back later, football practice, please still leave advice ^_^

 

I mean physically disconnect the cable

 

aight, i'll try that and tell ya how it goes

edit: nothing, it went to the same screen, it just said no drivers were selected..

 

When you get to the C: prompt
type dir and hit enter
let me know what it shows

 

"Volume in drive C is GATEWAY1
Volume Serial Number is 1577-1EF7
Directory of C:\
MTM <DIR> 05-30-04 11:38p
config sys 198 05-30-04 11:38p
autoexec bat 173 05-30-04 11:38p
command com 92,870 07-11-95 9:50a
3 file(s) 93,241 bytes
1 dir(s) 2,145,746,944 bytes free"

 

If you dont see a windows directory, your pretty much in a hole. It means your OS is gone, prolly from a virus.

Sry dude

 

would reinstalling be an option? there's nothin on that computer i wanna save, hell i don't even knwo what's on it, it used to be my brother's till he broke it...said i could have it if i fixed it...and is it impossible to put XP on there...considering it's from 95

edit: if i have to i might have the 98 disc, but 95 disc is gone

 

If it ran 95 then it should run 98.
I dont know the specs to be able to tell you if it will run XP or not.
But now that you have a boot disk, you should be able to reinstall.

 

lets hope so, thanks for all your help

edit: i have the 98 OS backup cd, but i dunno how to run it on my comp -.-

 

Well if you really can't boot, try booting up with a diskette.

Change dir to C:/Windows

type win

Should load Windows.

 

If its a restore CD, Just boot from the CD, but make sure the CD_ROM is selected in the BIOS as first in the boot order. Restore CDs will ask if to want to return the OS to a default install select yes, and it will install automatically.

If its a regular 98 CD, boot to the C: prompt then
CD D: <enter>
to get to CDROM and type setup.exe

 

i put it as the first boot, it stil went to that screen, i changed it to d and typed setup

drive d is not read (or somethin like that)
Abort, Retry, Fail?

 

Try to make a win98 boot disk with CDROM support.