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My daughter's machine suddenly stopped playing either vcds or dvds and I
assumed it was because she'd got windows Media Player, Winamp player, Real
Player, Quick Time player, Uncle Tom Cobbley player and all. So off I went
to uninstall them all then just reinstall one. I uninstalled them all then
started to download the latest Win Media player using Gozilla. An error
message came up that a gozilla file was corrupted (probably as a result of
using Ad aware to remove spyware) so as she doesn't really use, I
uninstalled gozilla too. It prompted me to re boot which I did - except when
it restarted (before reaching windows) I got the message "Invalid system
disk. Replace and hit any key). Normally I'd expect it to be a floppy
accidentally left in or similar but in this case there was no disk of any
sort in the machine. Hitting any key broight up the message "Insert Atapi
boot disk".

And that is as far as I can get. Haven't a clue what the Atapi boot disk is
but having looked through her cds I'm pretty certain she doesn't have one.
In the end I had to leave it and come home and appeal for help. So HELP!!

She's running 98SE, 60G HDD, 64 RAM, AMD 800 processor by the way.

Put a emergency boot disk in a: and boot to it. At the A: prompt type:
fdisk/mbr [enter] then type: sys c: [enter]. shut down, remove floppy
and boot normally with all your drives empty.

Steffi wrote:
>
> My daughter's machine suddenly stopped playing either vcds or dvds and I
> assumed it was because she'd got windows Media Player, Winamp player, Real
> Player, Quick Time player, Uncle Tom Cobbley player and all. So off I went
> to uninstall them all then just reinstall one. I uninstalled them all then
> started to download the latest Win Media player using Gozilla. An error
> message came up that a gozilla file was corrupted (probably as a result of
> using Ad aware to remove spyware) so as she doesn't really use, I
> uninstalled gozilla too. It prompted me to re boot which I did - except when
> it restarted (before reaching windows) I got the message "Invalid system
> disk. Replace and hit any key). Normally I'd expect it to be a floppy
> accidentally left in or similar but in this case there was no disk of any
> sort in the machine. Hitting any key broight up the message "Insert Atapi
> boot disk".
>
> And that is as far as I can get. Haven't a clue what the Atapi boot disk is
> but having looked through her cds I'm pretty certain she doesn't have one.
> In the end I had to leave it and come home and appeal for help. So HELP!!
>
> She's running 98SE, 60G HDD, 64 RAM, AMD 800 processor by the way.

"Gerry Nance" <> wrote in message
news:...
> >From: Wizard
> >
>
> >Newsgroups: alt.computer, alt.computer.workshop
>
> >Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 16:56:22 GMT
>
> >
> >Put a emergency boot disk in a: and boot to it. At the A: prompt type:
> >fdisk/mbr [enter] then type: sys c: [enter]. shut down, remove floppy
> >and boot normally with all your drives empty.
>
> And if you don't have an emergency boot disk, then you need the Win98SE CD
to
> make one.
>
> How is it going?
>
>
> Gerry Nance
>
Many thanks for your suggestions - daughter lives 30miles away so not had a
chance to try anything yet. going over later this morning. Can I make a
98boot disk on my own pc first, - bearing in mind that I am running XP? I've
hd a look at www.bootdisk.com but don't know which boot disk she needs -
"Windows 98 SE OEM" or
"Windows 98 SE Custom, No Ramdrive". I have the original win 98 that was
installed on her pc.
Can anyone advise?
thanks

OK, so I've tried booting from the floppy. It seemed to work, showed windows
was starting then stuck on the C prompt. Tried C/; startup etc with no
luck. (Did notice that during the start up there was the message "PCI
device detect failed -device not found" and Creative SB16 Emulation driver
not loading" Daughter states these massages have appeared on each boot and
are because she had a new sound card installed and it still searches for the
old one.



So I tried altering it so it booted from the cd rom and went through the
process of installing win 98 again. Seemed to go fine until it rebooted and
started searching for installed hardware. Then I got the error message
"Invalid VxD dynamic link call from VWIN32 (01) +00000714 to device 00009
service 1. Windows configuration is invalid."

Ignoring it and carrying on just brought me round again and again to the
same point. I really don't want to have to format and reinstall - mainly
because I don't know how to, but also because although she's backed up most
of her data etc., she won't have backed up her address book, messages etc
and is unlikely to be able to find the drivers disks etc that go with
reformatting everything. Anyone any suggestions for simply reinstalling Win
98 without formatting or else repairing the current installation?

"Steffi" <> wrote in message
news:bjdl14$36b$...
> OK, so I've tried booting from the floppy. It seemed to work, showed
windows
> was starting then stuck on the C prompt. Tried C/; startup etc with no
> luck. (Did notice that during the start up there was the message "PCI
> device detect failed -device not found" and Creative SB16 Emulation driver
> not loading" Daughter states these massages have appeared on each boot
and
> are because she had a new sound card installed and it still searches for
the
> old one.
>
>
>
> So I tried altering it so it booted from the cd rom and went through the
> process of installing win 98 again. Seemed to go fine until it rebooted
and
> started searching for installed hardware. Then I got the error message
> "Invalid VxD dynamic link call from VWIN32 (01) +00000714 to device 00009
> service 1. Windows configuration is invalid."
>
> Ignoring it and carrying on just brought me round again and again to the
> same point. I really don't want to have to format and reinstall - mainly
> because I don't know how to, but also because although she's backed up
most
> of her data etc., she won't have backed up her address book, messages etc
> and is unlikely to be able to find the drivers disks etc that go with
> reformatting everything. Anyone any suggestions for simply reinstalling
Win
> 98 without formatting or else repairing the current installation?
>
>Hi Steffi
Try This::
Boot from Win 98 boot disk which you've said you can make on your PC.
If your CD is an upgrade version, you'll need a copy of an older OS (Win3.x
for Win95upgrage, Win3.x or Win95 for Win98upgrade).
Remove any DOS drivers:
At the c:\ prompt type,
del autoexec.*
del config.*
Make sure the new installation won't see the old one. In order to do that,
type:
cd windows
ren win.com win.co-
cd \
ren windows windows.old
ren progra~1 progra~1.old
Install!
E:\win98 (if E is the CD drive
setup
Now, you'll have a fresh Win9x installation. All the files from the old
installation will be in c:\windows.old and c:\progra~1.old, from which you
can recover whatever information you want. After you're done, you can remove
these directories to save space.

* If you have any DOS-based programs that rely on specific Autoexec, Config
or "Boot to previous version of MSDOS" configurations, this procedure may
render them inoperational.