Hi,
I know next to nothing about computers, but I know my laptop isn't working. It was working fine when I went away about a month ago, now that I'm back, when I turn it on, it asks for a system disk. I don't know what happened. It's just been sitting in it's case for the last 5 weeks. I have all kinds of stuff on it, that I need to get at and I don't know what to do Is there some way to get back to my desktop? It's an older laptop cuz it's all I could afford, and it has windows 98se I haven't had it very long, maybe about 3 months, it's a Toshiba Satellite 2210CDT. I have my original bootdisk. When I put it in, it says:
1. start windows 98 setup from cd-rom
2. start computer with cd-rom support
3. start computer without cd-rom support

I tried 3, without cd support hoping that it would find everything in the hard drive, but it didn't work.
If I completely reinstall windows, won't I lose everything that's on my laptop? Is there any way to get windows to run or recover windows, so I can get at all my files? I appreciate your help, school starts in 3 weeks and I need a working laptop by then.
Please help.

I have a second issue, but I'll make another post for it.

Hi vtech,

As the laptop is very old, it could very well be a hardware failure If that's the case, then there's not alot that can be done about the data on it.

However, if you reinstall Windows, it won't delete the files that are saved there. It will only reinstall windows The older versions of Windows were good this way, you need to "format" the hard drive manually to lose the data.

I'd say this is your best bet to get your data back.
If Windows Setup can't find the disk either....

Hi again,
Well, that's good news about reinstalling windows. Someone said that maybe my cmos/bios battery went dead, but I can't figure out where it is to check it or replace it. I hope it's not a hardware problem, it was working perfectly before I went away.
Thanks again.

I hope it's not a hardware problem too

The person who told you it was a cmos/battery problem...they're wrong. And unfortunately due to the fact this is an old laptop, the battery will be soldered on the board, and won't be able to be changed.

Try Windows reinstall, and let me know how you go

Hello,
Okay, that didn't work. I put in the bootdisk and the cd, it ran and here's what I got
"Setup cannot install windows 98 on your computer.
An error was detected while trying to read or write to your hard disk. To quit Setup, press F#"
When I press F3, I get"Windows is not completely installed, if you quit now, you'll have to run it again". So I quit it and I got this:
D:\WIN98>
I tried typing in setup after the prompt(don't know if that was right) and got this:
"Setup is now going to perform a routine check..
..Please wait while Setup initializes.
Scanning system registry...
Cannot create a temporary directory.
If you have HPFS or NTFS installed on your hard drive, you will need to create an MS-DOS boot partition to set up windows"
and it returned to the D prompt.
Help!
Any suggestions?

Hmmm...
that's a rather interesting one.
I used to have a really comprehensive guide written up for Windows 98, to reinstall it. Unfortunately this was around 10 years ago, and it's been almost that long since i've last installed windows 98.

Give me a minute, and i'll see what i can find for you