Recently my ME failed to boot giving the "Invalid System Disk" message.

Any attempt to boot with a downloaded ME floppy boot disk from www.bootdisk.com gives the same msg.

However a W98SE boot disk, booting in safe mode (left ctrl) will get me to Dos allowing me to confirm that floppy drive & hard disk are OK as I can access all folders & files.

Does anyone know why the ME boot disk fails and how to get ME to boot?

Hi PeterA,

Welcome to PCHF!

It's possible your partition got messed up somehow.

Do you have more than one Hard Drive? You may have to set your BIOS to boot from another hard drive.

Thanks for responding. I have only 1 HD drive (15GB). Fdisk reports it as Active, FAT32, 14GB. Can you suggest a utility to inspect/check the Partition Boot Records for FAT32. Is this where IO.sys for ME resides?

I think you may be after a tool/s like THIS

Also this: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;221512

..and I've got to ask this (sorry) but you don't have a floppy disk or bootable CD inserted when you boot do you?

Thanks for your suggestions.

The Tools site you suggested http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3...tToolsRefs.htm has been suspended by Yahoo. I will try later.

Re your query on boot disks
ME wont boot from HDD (I confirm floppy & CD empty),
I get "Invalid System Disk" which means it does get far enough to select safe mode from ME menu

PC will boot from W98SE boot floppy. If I then select safe mode to get Dos prompt I can explore the C drive & see that it appears OK. But cant use Dos 7 to execute the Dos 8 utilities present on ME. An attempt to boot W98SE hangs looking for ramdrive.

PC will not boot from a WME boot floppy downloaded from www.bootdisk.com.

Can ME boot from a floppy?

Any other thoughts?