invalid system disk

[djsutch]

The problem was that I could not boot up, I kept getting an error" invalid system disk" I had win98 on a primary part. and 2000 on a secondary. The win98 start-up disk booted, but i could not access fdisk, nor could I format the hard drive. It seemed like I tried everything, including trying to reload windows; nothing worked. Just when I thought the hard drive took a hike, I decided to try the floppy that came with one of my hard drives. None of the tools on the floppy worked untill I tried a low level format. It finally worked, then I could write the fat table and load windows. Now it works fine. Can someone please tell me what happened and why, so this does not happen again?
Thank you

 

[ski]

It may have had a virus or some surface errors.

 

[djsutch]

Thanks for the reply, but I could not boot up, so I used norton antivirus; did not find any. I also did a scandisk and surface test from dos, and that did not work.

 

[edfair]

You probably had a corrupted partition table. Low level writes the sector so fdisk can use it. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[djsutch]

edfair, when I tried a format, their was something wrong with the partition table, but how does it get corrupted, a virus?

 

[Marcs41]

how is always a strange question, with many many answers...
Did this happen right after the 2000 install?
The solution is out there.

 

[djsutch]

no it did not , thats the strange part. it happened on my small 8g. hard drive that I play with. I had all ready installed 98 and 2000 on it, and everything worked fine for several weeks, untill I tried to boot up one day and got an invalid system disk error. This wouldn't normally bother me becouse I was able to correct the problem, but as someone who is constantly trying expand my electronics/computer background, I wonder how this happened.