This is my friend's Gateway PERFORMANCE 933 computer. AVG popped up "virus detected" on her computer. She does a scan and AVG finds 31 infected files. She reboots and receives this message: Invalid boot diskette. Insert BOOT Diskette in A: She brings it to me. I check for a floppy in the drive, none there. WD Lifeguard Diags for DOS says “NO DRIVE FOUND ERROR/CODE STATUS: 0120.” I then tried to boot with the 4 win2000 boot disks and end up with the ntdlr missing error. However, advanced settings in the bios do show the drive. I was finally able to get back into the system with 98 boot disk and fdisk /mbr. In trying to save her data, I ran AVG, then had to reboot; however, upon reboot again received the invalid boot disk error. So I tried again to run the 98 boot disk to fdisk /mbr so I could wipe the whole drive from there instead of clean it from the os, (data is unimportant at this point) but now – even booting from the 98 boot disk I still get the invalid boot diskette error. Seems I now cannot get anything to work, I have unplugged and replugged cables to the floppy drive, tried 3 more boot disks and even changed the floppy drive and still get the same error, invalid boot disk error. I added this hard drive to my old computer and tho Everest system info can see the drive fdisk cannot. Is there any way to fdisk /mbr the second hard drive? Or anything! To reformat the drive? Thanks ahead for help.

Try booting with the bootdisk and then run the fdisk utility. Use fdisk to delete the partition. If it's been converted to NTFS you'll have to choose the "non-DOS" partition in fdisk's delete menu (that's how it labels the NTFS partition). Once you've deleted the partition, recreate it and format it as FAT32 and you're ready to install.

Thanks, I tried that and of course, says "no non-dos partition" to delete. When my machine boots up, I see the my hard drive and the added WD hard drive, but nothing else is recognizing it because the mbr is either damaged or missing. Am at wit's end, lol.

The mbr (master boot record) is only important if you're trying to boot to the drive which you aren't right now. Try this, go into Computer Management (right click on My Computer and select Manage) and open the Disk Manager. If you see the HDD in there, you can delete/create a partition on it and format it.

Use Delpart to delete any partitions on the disk and then fdisk to create new partitions. Win2000 will format as part of the install process. Fdisk has problems with non dos or corrupted partitions. Find Delpart here: http://radified.com/Files/

you are wasting your time "NO DRIVE FOUND ERROR/CODE STATUS: 0120." The drive died. with no hardware the above suggestions are pointless.

I believe you could be right. I have tried everything. This thing/beast should get awards for having every error message one can have; "I/O errors, no "operating system found" more "Ntdrl this/that" errors and woe, at some point the Everest system tools and Windows System Info also lost the data. Wasn't there. Once, after putting the drive back in the original tower, I almost made it into the 2000 os and was joyful - and then - all froze. Upon reboot lost the floppy again. And horrors, was going to check to see if any in the bios had changed after all this and it had somehow, in advanced settings, I didn't make it boot sequence, he, he, everything then froze in *there*. Imagine that. And I could not get back in there after that. I'm done, he, he. Thanks much for help above, is just that the bad thing was, there was nothing found anywhere to partition or seen in device manager. As wanderer said, I believe its dead. Boy, does she owe me. Thanks, Jan