I'm having a problem, though I assume a windows 98 Disk may fix it - but it's on loan to a friend at the moment;)
I just reformatted my old junk PC, and want to load Win 2000 so I can serve SQL Server 2000 to my main PC running XP Pro - I know a bit about netwoks having a diploma in Internet Development, but I think I may have - in haste - reformatted my old PC incorrectly, so now when I boot it (fresh from reformatt) all it says is "Invalid system disk, Replace the disk and press any key". Now I would usually check my drives and take out any disks, but in this case there aren't any in there, so I'm not sure what to do - I downloaded a win 98 bootdisk to see if I could at least get some other DOS prompts running, but it wouldn't recognize it, and spat the same error out. I tried using my Windows XP CD cuz it's bootable, but it won't even read that! It's a weird one, any help is greatly appreciated.

Invalid system disk that it's referring to is your hard drive. Unless I'm mistaken about what you're saying.

It's blank, since you reformatted it.

Blank disks have no boot logs to tell the computer how to boot up.

Get a boot disk (bootdisk.com) to start up and run the install cd for whatever OS you are installing.

Then again I might be misunderstanding what you're saying and your problems could be different from what I'm thinking is going on. In that case, sorry ;)

Thanks, I'll give that a go, but in light of windows XP having a boot disk on the CD, and it not reading even that, I'm not sure if it'll work, and I have actually already attempted it with a 98 bootdisk, with no luck - it's driving me nuts right now!! You are correct though, there's no info on the hard drive - it should be like a new PC altogether - totally blank!

Check boot sequence if set to boot from hard drive first and it is not formatted as bootable you will get that error.If set to boot to the hard drive first, booting with a floppy or a CD will not get you anywhere. Enter the BIOS and ensure first boot device is either floppy or cd.

cheers, but I've been through that already too! I'm not new to PCs, which is why to me, this is really strange - Thanks for the suggestion though, it's a good one and another one I would have suggested myself;)

Thanks guys, the problem has been solved, after downloading and contructing a series of boot disks for Win2000 Pro, I got everything moving with those and the install CD.