Laptop Win98, that stupid disk error thing

[grandlethal9799]

my laptop was working great for a long time, untill i shut it down to take it on a trip (i had it on but in standby like most laptops do for a couple of months prior). it does not boot up anymore, i am greeted with the non-system disk error you get when you have a floppy disk in when you startup, the first time i got this there was in fact a floppy in the drive, please remove and press anykey. upon completing this action, the stupid thing gets cheeky and says something along the lines of system disk error please replace and press the anykey, so i put the disk back in and get the later messege in a nasty little circle of frustration. i have had this bug or glitch if you will on my PC twice now, but the difference being that i have a recovery disk for that and not for my laptop. is there anything i can do to bypass this? or should i start looking for a new hardrive?

 

[Mozart]

Hi mozart here I'm new also
This is what I'd try
1) try getting into safe mode and then run scan disk
2) if you can,t borrow a windows startup disk and boot into
the system with this and run scan disk there
make sure that your bios has boot floppy as the first boot
3) check for physical damage to the floppy drive.
4) If you finally get in but have more problems boot to ms- dos and type scanreg/restore and chose the second newest good registry

Hope this helps good luck

 

[AnySupreme]

yea...do what he said...although i would tell you to leave windows 98 alone...and upgrade to xp....or even windows ME ....98 was always a problem for me...then it would always want to restart for any new programs....and always tell you to put in that windows 98 disk....go with something newer....if you absolutely can't...try what he said...

 

[grandlethal9799]

i have tried, to get into the startup mode selection screen but the error messege has priority and comes before them (bill gates wtf?) about using a startup disk, i thought that the startup disks were all unique and would only run with the system they are shipped with? i dont want to spend any money on it it is not worth any investing over 50 bucks as it is old and has a celeron with 128 ram so i think upgrading to winXP is out of the question.

 

[AnySupreme]

128 with a celeron isn't that bad...considering that 64mb of ram is the minimum for xp. i once had a laptop running 266mhz and 128mb of ram, using windows xp.it ran good, i'd say as good as systems running twice as that. it's all about what types of programs you're going to run on it. if you're just going to use it for regular chatting and internet exploration then, you should be fine. but if you're looking into gaming and videos and all that, it's not going to happen. i would tell you to look up your motherboard specs or the specs of your laptop itself and see what limitations it has. to see if it's upgradable.if it is, i'd tell you to get yourself at least another 128 or try to get yourself at least 512mb of ram and update your processor. but while doing all of that..you have to make sure that you update the bios, because older bios won't recognize some newer parts. but if you have any other questions about that, let me know. try to get me the name of the laptop..and i'll try looking it up myself for you.

 

[grandlethal9799]

the laptop is a micronPC transportGX, i have only used it for the internet and playing starcraft, warcraft3, and diablo online. i know that the memory is upgradable, it uses pc100-222-620 memory and has 2x64 mem. i dont think it has an upgradable cpu, the only other ones i see are the mini pci slot that has a 3com modem witch i dont need in it, and a 10gb hardrive, and a cd slot. i know that i can go to the company website to get an iso for the recovery disk, but they have so much numbers and models that i have no idea witch one is right, there is a spot were they ask me for an serial number of the laptop but im not sure witch number that is because i bought it from a company that was updating and it has numbers and stickers with i.d all over the bottom.

 

[Mozart]

more options from by last response

hi mozart again,

you can borrow a win 98 startup disquette from a friend and it will work ,what you are trying to do is restore files that are damaged probably io.sys mdos.sys and command com. If you can find any way to get in via this disquette or safe mode you want to replace these files with good copies they are not unique you could even get copies from someone else's system and use them. Then your system could correct itself after . Another option is to just get in if possible with the disquette in dos get to c and do the command sys c: to get these files back ps get a friend good with dos to help if required

good luck

 

[grandlethal9799]

thanks for the info

if i mash f2 when booting up, i can get to the setup screen, is there anything i can tinker with in there that can maybe bypass the system disk requirement.
just curious, has anyone else had this happen to them, this is my third time having this problem the first time on this laptop.