Unable to boot from any drive on laptop

Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive I
place first in the boot sequence, the following message
always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any key
when ready.
Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
message. Does anyone have any recommendations or diagnoses?
I thank you in advance.

If you can boot to the W98 boot floppy using another machine then the best
guess would be that the floppy disk drive on the Gateway is not working.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Glenn" wrote in message
...
Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive I
place first in the boot sequence, the following message
always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any key
when ready.
Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
message. Does anyone have any recommendations or diagnoses?
I thank you in advance.

Jeff,
Thank you for your response. Does this mean that my CDROM
drive is bad as well, given that I cannot boot from a
bootable CD?
-----Original Message-----
If you can boot to the W98 boot floppy using another
machine then the best
guess would be that the floppy disk drive on the Gateway
is not working.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Glenn" wrote in
message
...
Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive
I
place first in the boot sequence, the following message
always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any
key
when ready.
Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
message. Does anyone have any recommendations or
diagnoses?
I thank you in advance.


.

If you have confirmed that the floppy disk and the CD are both bootable by
testing on another machine, then the only other possibility I can think of
is that the machine is ignoring the BIOS instruction for boot device
sequence, and that seems to me a much less likely possibility than that the
drives have failed, even though both drives failing is itself fairly
unlikely (or unlucky).
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Glenn" wrote in message
...
Jeff,
Thank you for your response. Does this mean that my CDROM
drive is bad as well, given that I cannot boot from a
bootable CD?
-----Original Message-----
If you can boot to the W98 boot floppy using another
machine then the best
guess would be that the floppy disk drive on the Gateway
is not working.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Glenn" wrote in
message
.. .
Scenario: Gateway Solo 9101 w/formatted 4GB HDD. Am
attempting to reload Win98SE. Regardless of which drive
I
place first in the boot sequence, the following message
always appears: Non-system disk. Replace and press any
key
when ready.
Have tried booting with Win98 Boot, Win98 CDROM, Win2K
boot floppies and Win2k CDROM. Even tried to boot
w/Turbolinux6.0 CDROM to use that disk's HDD formatting
utility. Every attempt produces the aforementioned
message. Does anyone have any recommendations or
diagnoses?
I thank you in advance.


.