Old computer formating issues

[OldWolf]

Howdy folks!

Well, here's the deal... I'm running an old pent II 266mhz on a computer I got from work. I don't use this computer for anything important, though I was thinking of making it my file server.

It was running 98, I bumped it to 2k which worked fine for quite a while.

Recently, I decided to burn the whole thing and start from scratch (it was severely bogged because of the tiny processor)... I used a program to zero over everything.

I then set my bios to load from the cd, rebooted the computer with win 2k in it, and ended on the "Operating System not found"

I was thinking, if I have a boot disk, I could easily get past this issue and get the OS on the system. But, I have no floppy drives on any of the other computers in my house.

Does anyone have any ideas for how I could get the computer to accept the CD drive, or where I could get a boot disk (or if the boot disk is even going to help?)? If it comes down to it, I could go drop 30 bucks to buy an external hard drive and create a boot disk from my laptop, but I'd rather not spend the money if I can help it (since I'll probably never use that drive again).

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[rjfvillarosa]

Can you borrow or buy a cheap floppy?
You could then go to bootdisk.com and download a small app that can make you a boot floppy, or even make one yourself on your laptop.
The problem you are having is that the CD has no drivers installed, you need to create a boot disk to install the drivers for the CD.

[OldWolf]

I kinda figured that was the case, but I didn't want to make wild swings in the air and lead someone down the wrong path, lol.

I have the floppies, I just don't have the drive... the desktop I'm working on is the only one I own with a floppy drive.

[rjfvillarosa]

You could just borrow the floppy drive out of your working machine, remove it complete with the ribbon cable because it is quite`easy to get the number one pin on the floppy drive mixed up, the mother board end is far easier to orientate.

[OldWolf]

I don't have any available towers... just laptops. :/

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to find a friend with a floppy drive.

Thanks.

[rjfvillarosa]

Originally Posted by OldWolf the desktop I'm working on is the only one I own with a floppy drive.

I took this to mean you were working/surfing PCMech on a tower, sorry about that.

[OldWolf]

Yea, you're right, that was unclear. I'm really not sure why I wrote it that way, lol. That's my fault, thanks for your help.

Thanks.

[OldWolf]

Alright, I'm still having issues... :P

I got the boot disks, ran them, got through set up just fine, but it's still ignoring the CD in the drive.

I'm on the screen where it's asking for the Windows 2000 Professional CD-ROM, I popped it in and hit enter, and it's acting as though I haven't done anything.

Any ideas?

[edrod13]

oldwolf,
You might have problems with your CDROM. The win2k CD is bootable so there is no need for a floppy or Drivers for your CDROM. Make sure that in bios the first boot device is CDROM and when the machine boots you should be prompted to hit "ENTER" to boot from CD. At that point hit enter and then follow the prompts to load the OS. When you go into bios make sure that it detects the CDROM and you might have to change the ide port to AUTO. If that doesn't work then you might need to replace your CD drive to load an OS.

Edrod13

[PommieB]

A lot of older computers have this problem, you generally had to boot from floppy, which would have an option of booting from CD, pressing this option would load a generic CD driver, which would in turn recognise and boot the CD, 98 and mill boot disks can do this. The computer is pretty old I'm surprised it even as the option to boot from CD, another option is to flash the motherboard with the latest bios, this may make it easier to boot from CD. Thats assuming you can locate a bios update for it.

[glc]

If the bios does in fact have a boot from CD option, your CD drive is shot or doesn't support booting - I saw this once with an old 8x Samsung CD drive. CD drives are cheap enough, treat yourself to a new one if you don't have any spares or can't borrow one. It's *possible* the IDE cable on the CD drive is shot too.

[OldWolf]

The cd drive was working just fine up until wiping the system to start fresh.

The bios order is correct (cd first), I'll check the ide but I think it's already set to auto...

I can't believe the cable could have been corrupted inside of a day, and I find it unlikely that the cd drive isn't up to date. I will go ahead and try grabbing a new CD drive, if I don't use it in this computer I can always put it towards the new one.

I don't have a flash card at the moment, and I'm not entirely sure I could find a bios to work with this really old motherboard, lol.

I appreciate the help guys, I'll give the suggestions a try before throwing it out the window. :P

[glc]

Just because a CD drive is working fine doesn't necessarily mean it supports booting. You *may* have to manually set the IDE position in the bios to CDROM instead of AUTO, I've seen this on some older AMI and Award bioses.