VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Drew]

Bought a new computer. It's working great. I had the old one purged so as to reload and hand down to the kid. Went to set up Jr's computer and when I turn it on to reload windows I get a black screen saying "invalid system disk. Replace disk and start again. Uh...what's it talkin' about..and what do I gotta do to get it to reload windows?

Thanks

Drew
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www.voiceoverdrew.com
Skype: andrew.hadwal1
Although I have a full head of hair, I'm quite ribald.

[brianforrester]

It sounds like the disk simply needs to be re-formatted.

The good news is that you aren't seeing this screen when there is still information that you need on the disk...

Here's the easiest thing to do:
(I'm assuming that you're going to be loading windows from a cd)

Place the windows installation cd into the cd-rom drive...

When you turn on the computer, enter the BIOS setup. Depending on the mainboard, you enter the bios by pressing "esc" or "F2" or "F9" or "F10" or "F11" and sometimes "F12"...
You can only enter the bios in the beginning of the boot sequence, immediately following the loading of the RAM

Once you're in the bios, you want to look for the tab that has optios for "boot sequence" (note that your mouse will not work in bios and you must use the arrow keys, check at the bottom of the bios screen for the specific commands associated with the keys)

When you find the boot sequence, move the "cd-rom" to the top. Basically, what you're doing is telling the computet to look at the information on the cd-rom first and not the hard drive.

Make sure that you don't change any other features in the bios unless you really know what you're doing!

Save and exit out of the bios screen.

Depending on the computer it may or may not now attempt to boot from the cd-rom... if it doesn't simply shut the computer down and then start it up again.

The system should now automatically boot from the windows installation cd that you previously placed in the drive... follow the instructions on the screen, but make sure you perform a "full format" of the drive, it takes a bit longer, but is definately the route to go... also, depending on the version of windows that you're installing, I would suggest formatting using the NTFS file system, as long as it is provided as an option.

Good luck with it... if you run into any problems, feel free to send me a PM. I'd be more than happy to step you through it in a bit more detail.

Cheers,
_________________
Brian Forrester Voice Overs
www.brianforrester.com
brian@brianforrester.com
778.668.5715

[Drew]

Thank you Kevin and Brian. As it turns out...I don't have a Win. Boot disk at the moment. However, Brian the kind soul that he is, is at the present, uploading the program to me as I write. I may indeed have to enter some commands once I burn the boot files to disk.

Again, thanks. I got a twelve year old pacing the floor at the moment.

_________________
www.voiceoverdrew.com
Skype: andrew.hadwal1
Although I have a full head of hair, I'm quite ribald.

[Drew]

A big public thanks to Brian for uploading Win 98 to me. I appreciate the effort, the phone chat and the advice. Turns out I didn't copy it to CD correctly and the computer choked on it. Then, I thought, "Ah, what the hey! lets Try loading XP on that old IBM." Voila! The kid's in Neopet heaven, and the old computer is running better than ever before. Hmmm...so I shelled out $800 for a new computer for what again?
_________________
www.voiceoverdrew.com
Skype: andrew.hadwal1
Although I have a full head of hair, I'm quite ribald.

[brianforrester]

"so I shelled out $800 for a new computer for what again?"

For the privledge of seeing one of the biggest smiles on your kid's face since Christmas!

I'm glad that it all worked out in the end Drew! Now if only you could get him to eat his vegetables

Cheers,
_________________
Brian Forrester Voice Overs
www.brianforrester.com
brian@brianforrester.com
778.668.5715