Please help me. My new DAW won't work..

  • Thread starter Thread starter Uladine
  • Start date Start date
Uladine

Uladine

New member
I just recieved my anxiously anticipated computer system today. I hooked everything up (mouse, keyboard, monitor) and turned the system on. It said "BOOT DISK ERROR, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" I figured this was normal and inserted my Windows 98 CD and attempted to install it. I got as far as the option to use large disk support, where I chose yes, and then it told me to hit enter to restart. The problem is, when starting up, it showed a message saying "Press a key to reboot". I did that, with the windows disk in the drive like I was told to do, but again when starting up the message came up, "Press a key to reboot." I tried again. "Press a key to reboot." I tried again without the windows disk. "Press a key to reboot." It shows up every time. I even went to the BIOS setup to try booting win 98 from the CDROM instead of booting from the hard disk. Same message. I don't know what to do. Please help. I've been waiting so long to record again and now I'm so close yet so far.
 
Okay naevermind. Scratch that last post. I feel like an idiot. I switched the BIOS to boot from the CD ROM after I took at the disk. Im dumb. I guess it just wouldnt boot as there was no disk to boot from and nothing on the hard disk to boot from yet either.

But I still have a problem. I'm trying to run the Win 98 startup disk to install windows. It tries to start formatting the hard drive and then stops and says "insert windows 98 CD into CDrom" which I already did. I hit enter. Same message. I try the cdr drive. Same message. Ive installed 98 from this disk before, so I know its the right disk. Its clean and scratchless too. Anyway, I can't figure it out. Can you tell that this is the first computer I've ever purchased?
 
Weird. But, I'm not quite sure what order your doing all this in. Try the following so we are starting on common ground.

1. Make a new startup disk. I assume you are on a windows 98 machine now? Go to a command prompt. Start>Run, type in 'command' no quotes and press Enter.

2. From the command prompt. With a totally blank floppy disk in the floppy drive. Type 'sys a:' again, no quotes. Copy format.com from C:\windows\command to the floppy.

3. Download this program here:

http://www.sigmacomputers.on.ca/cdsetup.zip

And unzip it to the floppy.

4. Set your bios to boot off the floppy first, and then the hard drive, 3rd the CD-ROM. Boot the machine with the floppy in.

5. Hopefully you were able to boot off the floppy and are at a: prompt.

From a:

Type format c: /s/u/q

After that finishes

Type cdsetup

This will get your cd's working.

Reboot, it should boot to C and you have access to D and E as your CD's. Put the Win98 CD ROM in one of the drives and run setup.

I find it odd you would get a new machine with no operating system installed on it?
 
I'm also skeptical that you would get a new computer with a blank hard drive. More likely the hard drive was damaged during shipping.

"Its dead, Jim" - L. McCoy
 
Unfortunately no, I'm not on a 98 machine. I'm on my mom's comp and it has ME. My girlfriend is bringing over her Windows 98 CD, maybe I can have her make a startup disk before she comes over...
 
Oh buy the way, I ordered the system without an OS because I was on a tight budjet and I figured it wouldn't be too hard to install 98 myself. Supposedly the americancomputech tests their machines before shipping them, so I don't know what gives.
 
Could the problem be that both my hard drives are set as masters and theyre having a conflict? The jumpers on the back of the drives are both set the same and theyre both on the same IDE channel, so doesnt that mean I have two master drives on the same channel? The problem is I don't know how to set my slave disk's jumper to slave. They're both Maxtor's, one is 40gb and one is 20 gb. I want the 20 gig to be the master drive.
 
Yeah that would be a problem alright.

Rearrange your ribbons.

- Put the 20GB maxtor on the primary channel as master.
- Put the 40GB maxtor on the secondary channel as master.

i.e., no jumpers to change.

- set both CD's to slave. The jumper will be in the middle of the 3 options.

Yeah, ME doesn't have sys.com ... stupid Microsoft.

Have the drives been fdisk'd yet?

You need to do that as well. fdisk.exe will be on the ME machine. copy that to your boot floppy and reboot. Run fdisk.

And then boot off one of the cd-drives and install the OS.
 
Thanks. I'll try the F-disk thing. The way my case is arranged though I don't think I can put a HD and CDrom on the same ribbon. The HD's are too far below the cdrom drives for the ribbon to reach both drives. I'll do it if I can but its doubtful.
 
The HDs were set up so that the 40 was the master and the 20 was slave. Problem was that the jumpers were both set to master. I set the jumper on the 40 to slave, then took out the drive carrier, swapped the two HD's so I could switch the IDE cable neatly, then reinstalled the drive carrier. I rebooted and ran fdisk, which ran fine, but the same error is happening. My cd drives must be working or I never would've been able to get as far as I am. The HD's are set up on IDE channel one, the 20 as master and the 40 as slave. They both seemed to be alright according to fdisk. I would try putting both hard drives as masters on different channels, but the length of cable between the middle and end connectors on the ribbons aren't long enough to reach from the HD's to the cdroms.

Is there anywhere that I can download a windows 98 startup CD from the internet or anything else that would help? I tried Microsoft.com but couldnt seem to find what I needed. Thanks for all of the help so far.
 
It's just a guess, but you might wanna try this:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

But I don't think that's your problem. You might want to check if your drives are set up correctly in BIOS.

Next, you might want to disconnect one of the CDROM drives. At least temporarily. I'm assuming the hard disks are f'disked and formatted. Use the boot floppy created in step 1, above to f'Disk and format it.

I would not use the /s command while formatting unless the floppy has MSCDEX/CDSETUP. I'm completely on loose ground here, it's been ages since I used DOS. Emeric is better at this, I just prefer the easiest way out.

In the BIOS, configure the machine to boot from CDROM. The WIN 98 CD should be bootable. If it's not, it's an illegal copy.

Insert the CDROM into the drive and restart.

You should see a screen that gives you three choices, of which you should select 'Run setup from CD-ROM' or something like that.

After the first restart during the Installation, configure the BIOS to boot from hard disk.

After the install is over, try setting up the second CD-ROM drive. I say 'try' because I've never been succesful at this and I'm not really sure how to do this. I've never tried setting both CDs to 'Slave', though. Might wanna give that a shot, but first thing is to install the OS...

Sang
 
You got some good advice, but i would do things a bit differently.

First thing of course is to get the drives jumpered correctly. Most Maxtor drives use a jumper on J50 for either Master or single drive, or no jumper for slave. But Maxtor has been shipping some Quantom drives under its name too, so you will have to check.

Next thing to remember - with ATA-33 drives it does not matter where you plug a device into the IDE cable. But ATA-66 or ATA-100 devices want to have the Master device at the END of the IDE cable. Also these devices require a 80 wire, 40 connector cable to work right (verses a 40/40 cable for older devices). Some PC manufacturers, in order to save a couple of bucks, will put the hard drive together on an 80 cable and the CDs together with a 40 cable. So check for that.

If your cables are good, and your jumpers are OK, next thing to try is boot the computer up and go right ninto the BIOS. Usually you do this by hitting the DELETE key as its doing it memory count. On some systems you hit F2. Once in the BIOS look for an item to "Auto detect IDE devices". On some newer systems you just select the Primary/secondary device and hit Enter and it will search for it.
If your devices are jumpered/cables correctly, your BIOS will find them. If your BIOS can't find them you have a jumper/cabling issue and they will NEVER work.

Personally I would set up the 20 gig as Primary Master, a CDR drive (if you have one) as Primary slave (otherwise your CD-ROM), the 40 gig as Secondary master, and a second CD-ROM (if you have one) as secondary slave.

Once they are detected, I would boot from a 98 startup disk (if you can find one) and run FDISK to partition both drives. The default version of W98 FDISK doesn't support drives >64 gigs, but that's not a problem for you. Once you have FDISKed both drives I would format them, then copy the entire WIN98 subdirectory from the Windows CD to your C: drive. I would then run SETUP.EXE from there rather then the CD. The reason for this is in the future if the windows system needs a .CAB file it will know to immediately grab it from C:\WIN98 rather than prompting you for the CD. Less hassle.

Hope this answers some questions....
 
I solved the problem late last night. I figured that maybe the Windows 98 program thought that my cdrom drive was my D:\ drive. Through the process of elimination and a bunch of dos commands (im horrible with dos) and listening to which drive responded to which letter, I Figured out that my CDrom was actually my B drive, I knew my floppy was A, and my master HD was C.

So I guessed that my slave hard drive was my D drive. So maybe the Windows setup program was looking for the CD on my slave hard drive. I sort of took Emeric's advice about putting the CDroms as slaves, but to work around the cable length problem, I removed the CDR drive from Its bay temporarily and hooked up the middle connector of the channel 1 ide cable to it, So now the windows setup would look in my cdr drive for the disk.

It Worked! I Installed windows from my cdr drive, Put the drives back in their places and replaced all the cables, then checked everything and formatted and ran scandisk on my slave drive. Everything is functioning perfectly. I'm still in the process of installing software and drivers though. I'll let you all know how it turns out. Thanks for the help everyone.
 
Glad it worked out.

Thats weird about your B: drive though - typically systems reserve drive letters A: and B: for floppy disks, your first (system) hard drive is always C:, then other primary hard drive partitions, then secondary hard drive partitions, then CD_ROM and removable drives.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top