My comp Won't Boot properly. what can i do?

[Monkey Boy]

my system is: abit kt7, amd duron 900, 128 pc133, ibm 60 gig 7200. well i got it all put together booted it and i get this error "Disk I/O error" and im not sure what to do. the os will be Win ME if i can get it booted. any suggestions would greatly appreciated.

Thanx MB

 

[sohcrates]

is there an OS on the machine already? at what point in boot-up do you get that error?

is the drive formatted?

 

[MullySculder]

Hello,

uh... boy~

Always format your harddrive (of course, do back-up 1st) before you install the new motherboard.

then, re-install everything... back. Trust me.

 

[Monkey Boy]

theres no os. everything is brand new.

 

[BadThad]

Are you booting from a floppy disk? Is this your first build?

 

[Monkey Boy]

not my first build but i havent put one together in quit awhile, and ya im booting from the floppy.

 

[compudog]

You need to get into BIOS and let it auto-detect your drives. Then go into the advanced settings and select Floppy A as the first boot device. You cna set the second boot device to IDE 0. Put your faithful boot disk in the floppy and the WinME boot screen should appear asking if you want to boot with CD-ROM support yada yada yada. Select yes, let it finish, Once you get a prompt, run FDISK, reboot, then FORMAT the drive with the /s switch. Then you should be good to go. I like to copy the windows directory to a directory on the hard drive and run setup from there. Later, if you need to add any new windows components, windows remembers where you installed from and you won't need the CD. Just a suggestion.

 

[Monkey Boy]

ok just a quick question how do i copy the win files over to the hd? oh and you said format with the /s switch, im not quit sure what you ment.
thanx mb

 

[sohcrates]

he means that once you boot off a boot disk and get to a dos prompt, you type "format /s" which format's your disk and puts the system files on the newly formatted partition.

also, what i usually do is use the command "mkdir windows" then go "cd windows" then go "mkdir options" then "cd options" then "mkdir cabs" then go to D: or whatever your cd is and go "cd win98" then go "copy *.* c:\windows\options\cabs" then go to that directory and run "setup.exe"

 

[michec]

After you fdisk to set your partitions, you reboot and get to a DOS prompt. Then you type "format c: /s" to format the drive for FAT32 and then transfer the system files to the C: drive.

To copy the Windows CD onto the hard disk, type:

"xcopy X:*.* c:\win98se /a /e /i /h /k"

where X is the drive letter of the CD-ROM

You can call the directory whatever you want (I call mine Win98SE). Xcopy recursively copies all the files on the Win98 CD-ROM into the C:\Win98SE folder. Once xcopy finishes, type:

"c:\win98se\setup"

and you can install Windows from the HD. Like compudog said, if you install from the hard disk, you'll never need to insert the Windows CD ever again. Windows will get any files it needs directly from the hard disk.

 

[navylinux]

you can also set the cd-rom drive to be a bootable device. Put your WinME cd in and reboot the system. If the hard drive needs to be format, the windows install will see that and do it for you. Done it many times with win 98.
When the system boots from the cd, it will ask you if you want to boot from the cd, or from the hard drive. select cd. After you have installed windows and the system reboots you may see the same prompt again, just select boot from hard drive. You will be good to go then.