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Hi
I have been given a Toshiba 430 CDS laptop that has supposedly had the hard disc wiped clean.
I want to load Win 98 so I've tried changing the BIOS to boot from my Win 98 CD but there is no option for boot from CD. I have tried booting from a Win 98 bootable disc and I get the followingDISK I/O ERROR
REPLACE THE DISK, AND THEN PRESS ANY KEY"OK soI changed the floppy and downloaded a new version of the boot.exe from bootdisk.com, the same error message appears.
I read a lot about setting the CMOS, I have no clue what this is, and also that the CMOS battery might be dead.... again I have no clue about this or how to check it..
HELP PLEASE
The CMOS program is the interface that allows you to change the BIOS configuration - seems like you've already tried that. Older machines would not have the option to boot from a CD.
Very likely a bad (or dirty) floppy drive
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Excuse me being ultra silly, but did you "create the boot floppy" from the .exe on some other machine first?
Not trying to insult you or something but I've seen so many posts where folk just put the .exe on the floppy then try to boot with that.
DerekW
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Always a possibility, but that would've likely yielded (the infamous) "non system disk or disk error" message
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Hi Thanx for the responces.
I made the floppy boot disc by downloading the .exe from www.bootdisk.com.
What about the CMOS battery? I just contacted the guy who gave me the laptop and he tells me its been sitting around for some time not being used.
BTW - I get the error
"INVALIS SYSTEM DISK
REPLACE THE DISK etc etc"When i try to boot up without a bootdisk.
I'm also told now that an fdsk was carried out on the hard drive to wipe it clean.
Any further info and help would be appreciated.
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If the hard drive was erased with fdisk then it will have no boot files (or any other kind) on it and that message is just what you would expect. Since you've been into the CMOS already, you'd want to ensure that the floppy drive is set as the first boot device. Since you've tried different diskettes and different downloads, it seems likely that the problem is with the diskette drive itself.
As Derek has mentioned, those downloaded files won't themselves boot - you have to run them from another machine in order to create the boot diskette - still, that wouldn't generate a disk I/O error
You won't be able to do much with this machine if you can't boot up with a floppy.
The CMOS battery is what allows the computer to keep time and to 'remember' the various hardware settings when the machine is unplugged or powered off. If it's dead, usually that's more of an inconvenience than anything.
You'll also find that laptops are just *a bit* more difficult to work on than desktop models
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OK,
Plainandsimple
The floppy drive and CD Rom are interchangeable, slide one out and the other in etc.jboy
Are you telling me this machine is only useful as a door stop. Is the NOTHING that i can do to get it running....?
How do I get the boot files onto the hard drive...is there a way?
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Chriss,
These links (toshiba support), might be useful. Don't know, judge for yourself.
Good Luck,
CrazyOne
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"The floppy drive and CD Rom are interchangeable"
That is a detail you should have mentioned from the very beginning, dontcha think??
Also have a look here
Nevertheless, if the FDD is bad, it would need to be replaced - CMOS battery as well, if it really is dead.
Failing that, you'd have to remove the hard drive and connect it by means of an adapter to a desktop model in order to make it bootable and transfer files.
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Thanks for the info guys,
jboy.....sorry didn't realise it made a difference whether the floppy was internal or external ... never mind the link you gave has worked a treat and now I can get to an A prompt, just plain sailing now - I hope.....
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