At 12:10 AM 1/24/1999 Jim Gill wrote:
>
> . . . whenever [I] try to boot
> from the HD, you get the standard "Non System disk in
> drive. Please replace and press any key" message.
> . . . Before I call Gateway for her, I was hopeful that
> someone on the list might offer a simple solution.
>

Jim:

As any of my students will diagnose, viz.
Hard Drive Error Messages:

1. "HDD Controller Failure" (or no activity) means
the drive is not properly connected or set in CMOS;

2. "NO ROM BASIC Press any key" means there is no
PRIMARY DOS Partition, or the partition is not set
active;

3. "Missing Operating System" means the drive
is not formatted; and

4. "Non System Disk" or "Disk Error Replace and
press any key to Reboot" means there are no System Files
(operating system BOOT files, such as IO.SYS & MSDOS.SYS
for DOS).


Here, the Gateway's hard drive does not have Win95 system
files on the hard drive. Therefore, you need to:

A. BOOT from Win95 Startup Disk (SAME Win95 version as the
Gateway laptop);

B. From the A:\> Prompt, execute:

   SYS.COM  C:

If the partition is not active, go into FDISK and
select choice 2 from the main menu and SET PARTITION ACTIVE.

HTH.

Regards,

John Chin

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