Invalid system disk and Windows Me

[Arcanum777]

Hi:

When attempting to boot my computer today, I received a "invalid system disk" error and the computer wouldn't boot. after reading many posts on this and other forums, i have come to the conclusion that the boot sector of Windows Me on my hard drive is messed up. I am wondering if someone can tell me how to get back into my OS so that I can repair it with my disk, or if I can just reinstall it by booting from the cd and choosing to install Me again? If I have to reinstall from my cd, does this mean that I will lose all the information that is on my hard drive? It is my work computer an that could be catastrophic.

Thanks,
Arcanum777

[jmatt]

Try this .
Start up with your Boot disc or Startup disk in ( without cd rom support )
At the A: prompt , type > sys c: & press ENTER.

Take out the boot disk & restart your computer.

[angelo]

this may seem like a dumb reply and maybe i'm not understanding your question
the error message your getting usually happens when you forget to remove a floppy from your floppy drive and then try to boot up
is there a floppy in your drive other than a boot disk?
please forgive me if i misunderstood your question

[UK-Aspie]

Angelo's answer is the most obvious.
Sorry if it is too obvious.

Another is that a virus has splatted the boot sector, but you wouldn't connect to the Internet without a good anti-virus program, would you?

Boot from a DOS floppy and try "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotes) to repair the partition table. The "sys C:" option will overwrite the Windows ME startup with whatever version of DOS is on the floppy.