On Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:13:56   Doug & Sharon White wrote:
>        I have a strange problem.  I have an old 486-100.  I was changing out the
>hard drives in it and when I went to reboot I got this error message:
>
>        "Invalid system disk. Remove disk and press any key to continue."
>
>        The only problem is.......there isn't any disk in the floppy drive.
>
>        The computer and I have argued extensively over this.  I keep telling it
>there IS NO DISK IN THERE!!
>
>        And the computer answers back, "Yes there is.....Invalid system disk.
>Remove disk and press any key to continue."

Undoubtedly, the computers always seem to think they know more than us....

You mentioned earlier that you had changed out hard drives, so I'll throw out
a few ideas to play with.  It appears as though it isn't seeing the new hard
drive you installed, otherwise it would be booting up for you.

>Did the BIOS recognize the hard drive you installed?  The computer has to
be able to see what kind of hard drive you have in order to be able to talk
with it.  When you reboot the system again, most often you will see
someplace on the screen to "Press DEL to enter BIOS setup", or something
like that, at the very beginning of the startup.  Press the key it suggests
and look at the Primary IDE to see if it matches the hard drive you installed.
Some 486 machines did have the ability to Auto-Sense the hard drive, which
is nice if you didn't write down hard drive configuration before installing it.

>Did the hard drive come from another system as a main drive? If it did, then
it may be the BIOS isn't set up correctly.  Once that's set, it should boot
from it.  If it didn't, then you need to make sure the jumpers (located by
the power plug on the drive) are set to master, and you will probably have
to fdisk and format the drive, then install software on....

Best of luck!
Lance


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