Invalid Boot Disk at the A prompt (W98)

[tfaith]

Don't know how it happened, but I cannot get
windows 98 to appear, it just goes to the a: prompt
and says Invalid Boot Disk Insert Boot diskette in A:
I have windows 98 startup disk and inserted that.
but still gives me the a prompt.
I looked in c drive and files are there, is there any
way I can fix without losing the files.

Thanks in advance for any help
Teresa

[The_Dude]

Did you change your boot device in your BIOS?
You say all the files are there so try this.
Boot up with the 98 boot disk and type "fdisk /mbr" without the quotes. Then reboot without the floppy.
If you still have problems you could try booting with the 98 boot disk and then type "win" at the a:\ prompt to start windows. You may have to type the command "c:\windows\win" for it to work. Once in you could run the system file checker to try and repair your windows install.

[tfaith]

Am not sure about changing in BIOS, its actually
someone elses computer I am trying to fix for them. I will try what you said.
Thanks

[tfaith]

I typed in \windows\win and now it says Vfat device initialization failed Device or resource required by Vfat is not present or is unavailable
Vfat cannot continue
system halted

[homeflash]

Try this.. it may or may not work..

put a win98 boot disk boot it up
and do a

a:>sys c:

Systems transfer, hopefully it will fix your booting up problem

afterward, if you have problem,reinstall windows.
you data should still be fine



*** Sometimes Helping is a way of Learning! ***

[The_Dude]

I did a google search for " Vfat device initialization failed " and got a lot of hits. I would say in this case the error is because the file can't be found. Booting from the floppy limits the path to A:\ and probably the root directory of C:\. You could edit the path statement in the autoexec.bat on the floppy. Path=a:\;c:\;c:\windows;c:\windows\command

On the PC with the problem is there an Autoexec.bat and Config.sys file in the C:\ directory? If these files are missing windows won't start.

The reason I asked about the Bios setting is this. Usually the bios is set up to boot from a floppy if one is there and is bootable, failing that it tries to boot from the harddrive. The boot order would be A:,C:, in the BIOS. In my BIOS it is also possible to set it up to only look for a floppy. If there is no floppy I would get the error message you describe. My BIOS goes by "First Boot device", Second boot device etc. I have it set up to only look at the hard drive for a faster boot. Second ,third boot device etc are set to disabled. If your PC is trying to boot from the hard drive and you get that error message it would indicate that your system files are missing or your master boot record is corrupted. Fdisk /mbr can in most cases repair the master boot record. To replace the system files you could boot from the 98 boot disk and then run the command sys c:. This will make the c: drive bootable but still won't guaranty that windows will start, you need the correct Config.sys and autoexec.bat files for that to work.