help please.dos reports invalid system disk

[Guest_imported]

was running Win 98 on hard drive with one logical partition
created in fdisk.(Win 98 on C:& DATA ON dthen upgraded to Me over 98.I then resized partition D: with powerquest partition magic.Soon decided to go back to Win 98 so I uninstalled Me (I had saved all my 98 files on installation
of Me)All went well untill reboot time when the message came up 'invalid system disk,remove & strike any key'.There was no floppy in the drive.this now happens every time on boot up just after post.Boot floppy stops loading after 5 seconds.Tried hooking drive up as slave on another machine but this stops master from booting as well.Also tried boot disks for Win 2000 & rescue disks for partition magic.Nothing will make system go past post.New drive works fine in system.Any help 'Please'

 

[AlexeyGubin]

Check against the following symptoms:
1. All cabling is correct. This means - disconnect all devices (incl. CDROMs), so the drive in question is the ONLY IDE device in the system. Go to BIOS, perform HDD Autodetection. Save changes and exit. Check if you still cannot boot.
2. Your disk is NOT Western Digital (if yes, see below).
3. If you have WD disk, disconnect all other devices, remove all jumpers from disk, plug it in (as the only IDE device), detect in BIOS and check if this helps you to boot from floppy. There is a known issue with WDs working as a Single device on channel.
4. Setting this drive as slave to Windows 2000 machine renders it unbootable (Windows 9x/ME is not enough).
5. Set it to NONE in a BIOS Setup of Win2000 system. Check if it still won't boot.
6. Boot up from DOS floppy freezes.

If you have done all above with no positive result, let me know.

---
Wbr, Alex

http://z-a-recovery.narod.ru/

: ZAR - FAT16/32 data recovery tool.

 

[tlcscousin]

Make sure that the boot menu has the floppy as the first device checked in boot sequence.It is probably set to HD0 and HD1 and cd-rom.If boot floppy seek is set this would explain why it looks for a second or two at the floppy.If there is no entry to boot from floppy it wont.

 

[freddyh]

Thank you Alexy, you & your utilility program saved my hard drive from ending up in the rubbish bin.Its up & running again with Win 98. Everybody should have a look at Alex,s site,the link is on the bottom of his message to me.Well done Alexy,
freddyh.