compaq system problems, booting help

[Mr. Chambers]

trying to fix a compaq 5050 presario system for a friend, when trying to boot it says "invalid system disk remove disk and try again" or something like that.. fdisk see's the partition and i can get into dos fine.. she needs some stuff backed up is there anyway to get this to work i've tried all i can think of.. thanks guys

 

[XprincoX]

would this invalid disk be the floppy drive? If do try disabling it in the bios or disconnecting it all together.

 

[PsycoPhreak]

hmm...what OS is installed on the system?......"invalid system disk" it says huh?........if you boot from a floppy...can you access the HD and do a "DIR" command to list the files?...if so, that means the io.sys and/or command.com is either missing or corrupt......fastest dirty fix I know of that works is to copy io.sys and command.com from a bootable floppy to the HD....i've done it many times with the dreaded 'invalid system disk" message and it never failed...


the only thing is.....once you boot off the floppy.....you have to type in...."Attrib io.sys -r -h -s"...so you can see it to copy it.....once it's copied over to the C: drive....you run it again.."attrib io.sys +r +h +s".......


then again...if the system has win 9x...( not winME or higher) then just use an emergency boot disk....go to command prompt only and run "sys c:" command...it'll copy those 2 files over automatically...and it *should* boot on it's own then..