booting up problems - insert diskette

[alpinetech]

hi.
I get an error message when booting up an IBM iSeries laptop.
it says "Insert system diskette and press enter to reboot".

Does that mean the hard drive has failed? ive googled it but found no good diagnosis.
The bios does recongnize the hard drive.
also.. when booting into dos with a windows 98 boot disk i cannot see the hard drive.

 

[edfair]

Recognition of the hard drive by the BIOS says the drive is there. The diskette message says it can't find an operating system.
Booting with a 98 boot disk will not show a hard drive that is NTFS.

You could use fdisk and see if there is a vaild partition table on the hard drive. That would be the first step in diagnosis.

Usual combination of errors indicate that your drive has either taken a hit or it has self immolated the OS.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.