trying to format hard drive

[hoodoobluesman]

9:19 AM 8/7/2005-----sunday morn---10 am cst

my cpu is h.p. pavilion 6736-r purchased 1/1/01
667mgz celeron processor
upgrade to 256 sdram memory
floppy and cd-rom
windows o.s.---ME

due to problems with deleted .dll files i have been advised to reintall my O.S.

a friend has given me a M.E. installation cd.
i have went to freepctech.com and downloaded[on floppy]
a boot disk for M.E.
while trying to format the hard drive
i get *****NON-SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR.
REPLACE AND PRESS ANY KEY WHEN READY.
i have took disk out and reinserted and pressed key------and once just pressed key without takeout.same
thing took place.
i have done this in NORMAL. THEN TRIED SAFE MODE.
MESSAGE KEEPS REPEATING WITH PRESS OF KEY.

can you help??

larry maddock hoodoobluesman@yahoo.com

[yohon125]

make sure you go into your cmos setting and set your pc to boot off the floppy. just pres del when you reboot and you ram and hd are being detected. that will allow you to enter settup. sounds like the disc you made might also be having issues. could try another floppy. did you get the boot disc from ms?

[Martoch]

Get into your BIOS and make sure your system is set to boot to floppy first...from what you described, I'd say your system is looking for your hard drive to boot from, but seeing the floppy disk...thus the 'non system disk' error.

Combine this 98 Clean Install instruction page:
http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.php

with this ME Clean Install instruction page:
http://www.hexff.com/winme_install.php

Just do the stuff for ME from the ME page when you get to those steps, otherwise...it's just about the same as 98.


If your ME disc is an upgrade version, you'll be prompted to insert qualifying media (Win 98 disc works fine).

This is where most of us get our bootdisks.
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

[cmptrgydv]

if that don't work and it is looking for your floppy fisrt,
did you download file as a zip file, if so open file then load it on floppy

[cmptrgydv]

does your HP have a system recovery program on it,
or did it come with a CD,
if it has system restore on it, when you reformat your going to loose that copy of ME stored on your computer, it will be on the secondary partition,

[cmptrgydv]

the other partition will say something like system_save