[Mrcheeks]

My friend came to me with an unusual computer problem today. He has a Dell Dimenstion 2100 running XP Home i beleive. He said he was recieving some sort of FAT32 error, so i took his machine to take a look at it. I just hooked it up and after seeing the DELL boot up screen i recieved a screen that says "Invalid BOOT diskette, Instert BOOT diskette into A:" Im wondering if he may have had some sort of hard drive crash, but this is just a guess. Any help is appreciated.

By the way, there are no disks or floppies in the system, so that is not causing the error. Thanks.

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[kool808]

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[gerryf]

Is this a windows xp machine? From dell with fat32---seems unlikely.

Open the case and check all the cables.

If the harddrive ide is not connected and there is no floppy in the floppy drive, you will get that message.

Or, boot with a bootfloppy and try to change to c:\--doubt you can

It very well could be the drive

[stuart813]

possibly check the bios for the boot configuration

[Mrcheeks]

Ive checked all of the cables inside the machine, everything is secure. Ive tried to get into the BIOS but it hasnt been working so far. I think im going to try to run the harddrive as a slave in my machine and see if it is corrupted or has any problems. Hopefully all of the data is not lost.

[stuart813]

have u been able to get into the bios ??

[Mrcheeks]

Im not sure how to get into the bios on this machine. Ive tried del, F1 F2, and F8 when the Dell loading screen appears but none of the previous keys have started safe mode, or done anything for that matter. Any ideas?

[stuart813]

try these combinations.............

Acer: - Ctrl+Alt+Esc
ALR PC: (F2) or (Ctrl)(Alt)Esc)
AMI BIOS: (Del), (F1) or (F2)
AST, Advantage, Award, Tandon: - Ctrl + Alt + Esc
Award BIOS: (Del) or (Ctrl)(Alt)(Esc)
Compaq: (F10) (do this when the cursor is in the upper right corner of the screen blinking)
Dell: - F1 or Del.
Dell: - Some require pressing reset twice
Dell: - Ctrl + Alt + Enter
DTK BIOS: (Esc)
Gateway 2000: - F1
Hewlett Packard: - F1

hope that helps

[Mrcheeks]

When am i supposed to press these keys? i see the Dell screen and then i recieve my error. Ive tried the combinations of keys and none have sent me to my bios.

[stuart813]

i would start pressing it as soon as i powered it up if its looking for a bootable disc it has passed the bios post so u should be able to get in just find the right combination and press it soon enough and keep pressing until u get into bios may take a few tries but start with the dell specific combinations in the list i posted

[Mrcheeks]

Ok, thank you, ive entered the bios (F2). I dont know if this is contributing to the problem, but upon loading the bios the machine made some unnatural clicking noises inside and took a long time to load. This maybe not be part of the problem but i thought id mention it. Anyway, what should i do now that i am in the bios?

[stuart813]

there is a very gd chance the clicking is the hdd let me know if the hdd works now or not when u configure to boot from ide0 or hdd0 in bios

[Mrcheeks]

I made the first boot device "IDE-HDD" and made the floppy drive the last boot device, and i still recieve the Invalid boot diskette error after restarting.

[stuart813]

looks like u need a new hard drive mate u could try a low level format booted from a floppy

[stuart813]

just make sure as i am sure u have by now that 1st boot device is hdd or ide 0 and if the error message still appears i would be looking to a new hdd have u checked in the bios also to make sure the hdd is being detected u can set it to auto