I have tried booting with the startup disk (Windows ME) and I get a message indicating that Windows ME did not detect a valid FAT or FAT32 partition, and I'm given three options to fix the problem.
The first is: partition the drive! (DUH!) - OK, when I fdisk, a message flashes at the bottom of the screen: "Unable to access drive 1" (BTW, the other two options don't seem to apply - I'm NOT using third party partitioning software, and the laptop has NEVER been connected to the internet, so I'm relatively sure it's not a virus problem - granted, viruses don't come JUST from the net...but how would I check for a virus when I can't boot the machine??).
SO, I tried to run SETUP, and do a clean install, and I get "Setup cannot install Windows on your computer.
An error was detected while trying to read or write to your hard disk."
I've tried scanreg /restore and scandisk /all (including /surface) - with no luck - and the machine will not start in safe mode.
The helpfile suggests that the CMOS settings might be corrupted - but I can't find out how to check this (I've tried to verify everything in the BIOS...)
Can anybody help? I'll try anything!!
Thanks for your time!