invalid system disc

Partsguy · #1 11-17-2003, 08:04 PM

I deceided to clean up my sons(9 yr old) hard drive, he had lots of old games he does not play so I felt a format and reinstall of win98 was the best solution. It's a P166, 1.6G and 32mb RAM. After the format I started to reinstall win98 but had not realized it was an upgrade. Having moved recently, I could not locate anything that would allow me to go further so I shut the system down.
Now I can't seem to get anywhere, I've tried the startup disc and tells me invalid system disc, I've tried boot discs from bootdisc.com and the same results. What am I missing or what do I need to do to get Win98 loaded??? I found an OEM copy if Win95 but can't get and thing to load to get the install started. Any and all help is appreciated.

LooseChippings · #2 11-18-2003, 01:27 AM

Use a Win 98 Boot Disk, boot the PC from the floppy and run FDISK on the HDD.

Reboot from the floppy then format the HDD.

Partsguy · #3 11-18-2003, 11:06 AM

It seems no matter what type of boot disc I try I get an invalid system disc error and can't go any further, that's what has me stumped.

My sister was living just north of S Kensington tube station until she got married to a local chap in the summer and have purchased a home of their own recently.

LooseChippings · #4 11-18-2003, 11:40 AM

Have you set the BIOS to boot from floppy?

Partsguy · #5 11-18-2003, 03:36 PM

LooseChippings · #6 11-20-2003, 12:05 PM

Something is not right with this one.

Please confirm that in the BIOS the first boot device is set to Floppy.

If you get the same error message try a different boot floppy disk.

Partsguy · #7 11-21-2003, 08:48 PM

I disconnected everything and got it down to the basics and some playing with the BIOS and I've got it up and recognizing everything. I have run fdisk and formatted the hd.
Thank you for your help and assistance.
Cheers,
Jeff

goat_roper_me · #8 01-01-2008, 01:16 AM

hello all iam tryin to install windows me the hard drive has been formated and i did the fdisk with the floppy boot diskett but when i put the windows me disk (full version) in all it will do is tell me >>> invalid system disk<<< replace disk and hit any key and it dose the same thing over and over
i even tryed using win. 98 and 98se (full version) disks thay all say the same thing so what am i doin wrong or what can i do to get it to see the disk
thank you
ron/goatroper

harry12 · #9 03-14-2008, 08:34 PM

sounds like the Boot-floppy is wrong, have you tried it on another defunct pc?
My guess is that the PC should boot from the B-floppy without the HDD - only later in the boot-process does the HDD come into play.
Repeating the process with other OS discs rather points to a B-floppy(or floppy drive) problem.

Disk_Contented · #10 03-14-2008, 09:02 PM

I would say you have the hard drive as first device to boot before the floppy and cd drive. It's why all removable disks you try fail.
It's a common problem. Enter the bios and set the boot order as:
1 floppy
2 CD
3 Hard drive (or maybe HDD 0)