I formatted my comp with the format c: /s command, and it formatted. Then I restarted(with my boot disk in) and i type in (at the a:\ prompt) d:\. It changed to d then i type in "D:\setup" and it says the following:
"Invalid Media Type Reading Drive D"(Drive D is my cdrom, c is my hard drive, a is my floppy)
Abort, Retry, Fail

And when I try to go to fdisk off my bootable floppy it gives me the option of the one large disk(in essance, fat32?) and it dosen't matter which i chose, y or n, it says Error Reading Fixed Disk.

I read on the net in various places that the CMOS could be to blame for this. I can get into it hold down del at the startup and it prompts me for a pass,which i type in. But what do I do from there?

I guess theres 3 questions i'm asking...Thanks for anyones reply in advance!!
Yo

It sounds like you have your BIOS (aka CMOS) set up incorrectly. You can reset it to defaults but this will reset all settings; one of which might be essential to make your computer perform well, e.g. one that sets a higher memory bus speed.

Actually, a more likely problem is the IDE cable. I assume that you have both your hard disk and CD-ROM drive on the one cable. The cable could be damaged, so just try it with a different or new one.

Formatting with the 'system' (/s) switch should have allowed you to boot from the hard drive - that's why it's invoked.

No error messages during the format procedure?

Not so sure about 'blaming' the CMOS - hard drive should be autodetected on all but the oldest systems.

Is this a new installation? Was this system up and running before the format?

Do you know if the HDD and CD are jumpered correctly - are they on the primary IDE as master & and slave or are they setup as primary & secondary masters?

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To James Greenwood:

I get into the CMOS by holding down the del key
when it starts up, right? It askes for my password,
which i put in, then there are 3 box type things. It
sort of resembles the desktop. There are some
things i can do, one is set to default, one is
something like 'better' and one is like 'excellent' or
'best' or somethin like that.

I'll check the cables and see what i can do.

To Jboy:

No errors, it just asked if i was sure, and i confirmed
with y then it started and after it asked what the
volume name should be, and i put in c(made sense)

It was running, like...I don't really know how to
explain it. It would have the windows 95 startup
screen then it would asked me to login to windows. I
usually just clicked cancel, but when i move the
mouse the whole comp freezes. Thats why I thought
i should start over....

I'm not sure, i'll do some checking them come back
to that

Thanks for your guys' help so far! I'll post back soon!

P.s. James; when it boots up it says checking floppy for boot record, not found, checking ide-o(?) ok then it shows the windows 95 loading screen for like 1/100 of a second then it goes back to the booting screen. Then it just gives me the C:\ prompt, and waits for me to do something.

Ok - but it was up and running at one time, so very likely its hooked up and jumpered correctly.

Floppy boot record not found and checking IDE 0 are normal startup messages. You're getting a C: prompt, so the machine has actually booted to DOS - which is what would be expected after format /s - so far, so good.

"Invalid Media Type... " typically relates to a hard drive, not a CD-ROM drive.

On older machines you would not want a setting for the CD in the CMOS/BIOS
Having an entry for a D: drive that is not a hard disk could be causing the problem in this case - check and see, if there is an entry for d: (or hard disk '1') set it to none.

To access the CD drive from DOS, likely you'll need to load the DOS drivers for it.

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First off, thanks for the help so far.

Jboy:

The CD Rom drivers are on the boot floppy. How do i
access them? It says the cd rom specifications and all
that stuff when its reading my floppy, so they're
there. How do i set them/what do i do(i'm not that
smart on comps)

I'll go to my win 95 and see about the d drive in the
CMOS

Thanks for the help!!

Yo

THis is what i found:

Type Cyl HD WP Sec Size PIO Block
LBA
Primary...:User 6256 16 0 63 3079 4 on on

Sec....: CD Rom

I tryed to line them up as best i can,do i change
anything?

Yo

Hmm - ok, it seems that your machine is newer than I'd guessed - the CMOS settings sound ok, the computer recognizes the CD drive as such.

Are you starting with the boot floppy? It looks as if the computer is ignoring the diskette and booting from the hard drive:

"checking floppy for boot record, not found"

(and you get a C: prompt, instead of A:)

... but previously you mention starting from the a: prompt.

If you can boot from the diskette to an a: prompt, also watch and see if the CD drive is assigned a particular letter - some bootdisks work differently.

That is an odd error message for a CD drive though.

You mention fdisk gives you an error message?

Try running fdisk again:

fdisk /status

and see what it reports - or if it renders another error message.

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"It looks as if the computer is ignoring the diskette and booting from the hard drive:

"checking floppy for boot record, not found""

Change the boot device sequence in the bios to A, C(IDE), CDROM to get around the above.

JBoy:

"Are you starting with the boot floppy? It looks as if
the computer is ignoring the diskette and booting
from the hard drive:"

I can start from boot. It just loads all the cd drives
then gives me a a:\ prompt. I can go into fdisk, and
format, and i haven't tried anything else. Although i
think i mentioned what happened when i run it....

"Try running fdisk again:

fdisk /status"

I'll try later and i'll post back what it says

""checking floppy for boot record, not found"

(and you get a C: prompt, instead of A:)

... but previously you mention starting from the a:
prompt."

It reads the floppy when its in, i just posted the two
startup messages it gives. If the boot floppys not in
there, it loads as normal and says loading windows
95 then shows the loading screen for barely a second
then goes back to dos and gives me a c:\ prompt.

"checking floppy for boot record, not found""

Again, thats only if the boots not in there, it says OK
if its in there.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

Ok - just trying to get a handle on the status of this machine, based on the messages it generates upon startup.

Different messages mean different things - remember, we're not there to see what it's doing ; )

It sounds as if the CMOS is set correctly - it also sounds like the machine has built-in CD drive support.

Can you access the CD drive when just booting from the hard drive?

Like I said - 'invalid media' is not a typical error for a CD - if the disk was damaged or dirty, you'd get something like 'unable to read drive D:'
If the drive letter assignment was incorrect you'd get 'invalid drive'

'Invalid media' is what you get if you tried to access an unformatted hard disk.

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"'Invalid media' is what you get if you tried to access
an unformatted hard disk"

Hey, i'm just the messanger guy.

Anyways on the status, it doesn't look right to me,
but what do i no?

Disk Drv MBytes Free Usage
1 3079 100%
C: 2047
D: 1032

Thats all it says, exactly!

Oh, and when it gets past the win 95 screen(really
fast) it gives me the c prompt(C:\) and if i type in D:\
it changes to d then i go D:\setup to access the win
95 setup, it says exactly: Invalid Media Type Reading
Drive D, (below) Abort, Retry, Fail? and it
blinks...waiting for me/

Whoops! The spacing didn't come out right, i'll do it
again:

Disk--Drv--MBytes--Free--Usage
-1---------3079---------100%
------C:---2047--------------
------D:---1032--------------

There we go!

Yo

Hey - I'm just the guy trying to interpret those messages ; )

Ok - according to fdisk, you have a 1Gb D: drive which appears to be a partition of C:

You could try fdisk, choose option (4) then choose 'Y' to show extended partition information.

Anyhow, all that aside, you CD drive must be a letter other than D: - try "E:" or whatever letter works.

You may want to try starting over - remove the partitions and recreate a new one using 100% of C: as a primary partition - that, or else try formatting the D: drive if you want to keep the disk divided into 2.

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thanks for your prompt responce!

Anyways, see....thats the problem.

When i run Fdisk, it askes me for the y/n options of
fat 32. Ok, but either way, it doesn't matter what i
chose, when i press enter, it says 'Error reading fixed
disk', waits a second, then gives me a a:\ prompt. I
would start again but i cant get into fdisk.

Would reformatting d drive be format d: /s??

Thanks for all de help!

heres what i found(just doing random stuff)

I apparently have a b drive....?

When i type in b:\ it waited a second, then said
"Insert a diskette into drive B: and press and key
when ready"

And since i could find anywhere to put anything in
other than my a drive(which had my boot floppy in it)
I just pressed enter. Then it waited a second then
gave me a b:\ prompt.

I tryed every letter of the alphabet(a:\, b:\,) and all
the drives i apparently have are A drive, B drive, C
drive, and D drive.

When i type in d:\ format d: /s it says the infamous:

Invalid Media Type Reading Drive D
Abort, Retry, Fail?

Yo

Sorry - had to do some "stuff"

The 'phantom' B: drive is normal, a & b are dedicated letters for floppy drives, regardless if B: is physically present or not.

You have a third of your hard drive devoted to a partition that seems to be unusable - I would recommend using fdisk to remove all partitions and then create just one using the entire drive (3 Gb).

If fdisk can't do it, you may need something more robust, such as delpart.

It might be helpful to check the CMOS and ensure that the drive is being reported correctly - possibly 'auto' settings would be best.

Sure, you could probably format the drive (D:) but you don't need the '/s' switch - why would you - that adds the system files, which are only need for the boot drive. It might be preferable on a 3Gb drive to have it all in one 'piece' - it'll fill up faster than you think.

Not sure why your CD drive isn't listed in the alphabet - does this occur even when booting from the floppy disk?

If so, likely the CD drivers aren't being loaded correctly.

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"does this occur even when booting from the floppy
disk"

Not sure what you mean, like, does it change
everytime it loads, or what? It's always A:\.

"You have a third of your hard drive devoted to a
partition that seems to be unusable - I would
recommend using fdisk to remove all partitions and
then create just one using the entire drive (3 Gb)"

Strange, my hard disk is at LEAST upwards of 15 on
my win 95. Why is it 3?

"likely the CD drivers aren't being loaded correctly."

I have the original Terosan or terisan driver floppy.
What do i do? When I put it in it says "Non-System
Disk or disk error"

I'm typin to you on a mac, i don't have a exernal
floppy drive for this either. How do i get it on here?
Is there such thing as a bootable cd(cuz i have a cd
burner)

If I might jump in here, "Strange, my hard disk is at LEAST upwards of 15 on my win 95. Why is it 3?"

Based upon response #6, bios is seeing a 3 GB drive. Is drive detection set to AUTO?

Has there been an overlay to get the full (15 GB) capacity? If so, and the overlay isn't loading, that might give the errors you're experiencing.

Or, has doublespace been used on the drive?

Yeah - I'm having trouble following.

Fdisk 'says' the drive is about 3 Gb split into partitions of approx. 2 & 1 Gb respectively.

Since the hard disk contains only the system files (afaik) then nothing else is being loaded when booting from it.

Presumably booting from the floppy (whatever its origin) loads the DOS CD drivers.

While I'm not completely sure they're even necessary if the machine recognizes the CD drive in the BIOS, it's helpful to know what is being loaded.

As I mentioned earlier - we're not there to see what you're doing - so if you report different results from doing different things, it becomes hard to follow.

Consistency

Non system disk or disk error occurs if:

floppy in A: is NOT bootable

computer is not set to use the floppy drive as first boot device

hard drive does not contain the system (boot) files or they are unaccesible due to damage or misconfiguration

Sure, could be an overlay - quite a disparity from 3Gb to 15

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"....we're not there to see what you're doing - so if you report different results from doing different things, it becomes hard to follow."

Yeah, I was having a rough time deciphering all of this, which is why I wanted to get some basic facts clear. (I felt like the original post should be formatted and reinstalled from scratch.) ;>)

ie; downfall - Start with the hardware in the bios. Is it right? What in fact do you have for a primary disk? Lets make sure the bios/drive are talking correctly. Can you post the make and model number of the drive?

"Based upon response #6, bios is seeing a 3 GB
drive. Is drive detection set to AUTO?"

I'm not sure, i'll check and post back

Has there been an overlay to get the full (15 GB)
capacity? If so, and the overlay isn't loading, that
might give the errors you're experiencing.

I have no idea what a overlay is

Or, has doublespace been used on the drive?

Don't know what that is either

"Non system disk or disk error occurs if:

floppy in A: is NOT bootable"

The floppy i was talking about, is the driver floppy
the CD-ROM came with. It just has the drivers,
nothing else. When I posted that i was trying to
correctly(because you said they might not be loading
properly) and it wouldn't load up the drivers from
this floppy and startup

computer is not set to use the floppy drive as first
boot device

When i boot it up it says checking floppy drive A for
boot records, not found(if i don't put the boot disk
in) and it checks the IDE-0. So how does it not use
the floppy drive as the first boot device?

"hard drive does not contain the system (boot) files
or they are unaccesible due to damage or
misconfiguration"

Possible, I don't know, thats why i'm here

"ie; downfall - Start with the hardware in the bios. Is
it right? What in fact do you have for a primary disk?
Lets make sure the bios/drive are talking correctly.
Can you post the make and model number of the
drive?"

I'd have to go check, i'll add it to my next post

I don't believe we're using the same terminology.

You may recall that you formatted C: with the 'system' switch - which makes the hard drive bootable.

I'd included that as a general reason, not specific to this post.

I'm not sure there's any progress to be made at this point.

Dan? Have at it ; )

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Previous post seems to indicate "no large disk support" was chosen.

Quite a muddle. Start over - choose "yes" for large disk support, use the whole drive, pay attention to the information presented to you onscreen.

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