My family has had an old computer with Windows 3.1 since the very early 90s. Its always worked fine, even when I last used it a few months back. So today, I decide to take a notsalgia trip and fire it up. I turned it on, and got the message "The computer won't start up, please insert a systems disk". So I browse through my collection of old floppy disks, find one marked Boot Disk and another marked System Disk. I try them both out. When I put the Boot Disk in, it asked to enter/reconfigure the time and date. That was ok, so I moved on. Next thing I know, its saying A:\, meaning its in A Drive. I try the command Cd c:\ to go back to C Drive. Computer won't let me, message pops up saying "Invalid Drive Specification". Next I try the System Disk. This time, about a dozen error messages pop up (saying error found on line (#)) and finally after they stop, it says "Bad or Missing Command Interpreter, please enter the name of the Command Interpreter (e.g. C:\COMMAND.COM)". So I tried that example, didn't work. Anyway, I'm wondering just what's going on. I know its a longshot, because this system is about 19 years old, but I'm doing what I can to save this computer. Honest to god it worked fine a couple months ago. Now I'm getting this stuff. I tried logging into different drives, rebooting, and typing WIN to get back to windows, but no sale. I'm stuck in DOS as the computer loads up. Anyone able to help me out?

Is a hdd seen in BIOS screens? Sounds like the CMOS battery finally died and the machine doesn't know a hdd is installed. Can you give any system specs? Skip

I'm with Skip. Before you attempt any changes and dig yourself in deeper, check BIOS. Open the box and get the drive type from the HD label. Whilr you're in there reseat everything. If you still need to boot on a floppy, get a general-use floppy from www.bootdosk.com, [DOS 3.3 or 5 should do it.] boot on it and do a: dir c:\ take note of the date/time of command.com In those days, the timestamp gave the version, as in: command.com size date 5:00am for DOS 5. You don't want to start mixing DOS versions. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Also agree w/Skip. You're fortunate that it's lasted this long without a battery change. "Next thing I know, its saying A:\, meaning its in A Drive. I try the command Cd c:\ to go back to C Drive. Computer won't let me, message pops up saying "Invalid Drive Specification... ...and finally after they stop, it says "Bad or Missing Command Interpreter, please enter the name of the Command Interpreter (e.g. C:\COMMAND.COM)." Both of those because it doesn't know the geometry of the hard drive (lost when the battery finally died). You'll need to put that back into the BIOS after changing out the battery before it'll let you do much of anything with the hard drive. Maybe this will be of some help: http://www.computerhope.com/hdspecs... and there's other sites that will give you the correct specs, but make sure that they are input precisely as they were before.

Hi Mechanix - I agree with the a failed battery as most likely cause of the problem. As a test, surely one could input the disk params into the bios on startup and the pc would then boot from the hard disk itself. However I do not go along with your suggestion of reseating everything at this stage, as I feel this might just introduce further/different problems. Good Luck - Keep us posted.

Mike, Not meaning to disagree, but some of the really old machines I've worked on have a BIOS that forced a warm reboot after changing (an old 386sx Gateway comes to mind). When the battery was completely gone, it wouldn't hold a charge long enough to hold the settings (not sure how, but somehow I guess it dropped voltages to the MoBo on the reboot). Only a battery swap would suffice in that machine....

Yeah T-R-A, ran into that a couple years ago with an old 486 vl bus motherboard. Endless loop of boot, basic setup, reboot, basic setup again, reboot, basic setup one more time... First board I remember that wouldn't hold info on a warm start. Skip