Hi. I just put together a computer. I installed Windows 98, then Windows ME upgrade, hardware drivers, etc., etc. It worked fine when I shut it off last night. When I powered it up again I got the message, Disk Boot Failure - Insert System Disk. The last things I did were a Scandisk and a Defragmentation. I checked to make sure all the cables were plugged in. They were. I tried changing the order of boot device. That didn't work. The BIOS wasn't detecting the harddrive. I tried booting from the WIndows 98 disk, and even the Windows ME upgrade disk. Neither worked. I then tried a floppy bootdisk to format and re-install Windows 98. I got the message Cannot Format a Network Drive. Then attempted an Fdisk and got the message CDR101 - Not Ready Reading Drive C. Is there anything I can do to save the drive and system already installed? Thanks in advance.

Hate to say this... but if the BIOS isn't detecting your hard drive... nothing will. BIOS comes before anything else. When you are attempting to format, you aren't formatting anything because it isn't detected. Reseat all of the cables, both to the motherboard and to the devices. Switch out IDE cables... could just be a bad one. Try the drive in another computer and see if it can be seen there to check for a bad hard drive. If none of that works and the hard drive works in another computer, you are most likely looking at a bad motherboard/IDE controller, but you will have to do some testing to find out. Good luck!