Do I need a boot disk or what?

[dhorsman2000]

Please help me out with this guys, and be aware that I am a complete idot when it comes to computers    so spell it out as in detail as possible   I just bought this laptop off of ebay and I knew it didn't have an operating system so I took my win98 boot disk and pluged it in. I get to boot menu in BIOS (I think) and select hard drive and it says invalid system disk. Do I need a new boot disk? everything up until that point seems to work ok it does the ram passed screen at first start and then it goes right to  boot menu. Should I down load a boot disc on a CD from my desktop and try it on my laptop? Where is a good place to get a  bootdisc for windows xp?

Thanks in advance for the help,
Dewey

PS sorry if this is in the wrong forum
if it helps it is a Micron Transport Treck 2

[dhorsman2000]

anyone? PLEASE?  

[GX1_Man]

Folks are just waking up where I live.  

What you need to do is set the machine to boot from CD first and if you have a bootable CDROM you are all set to load.

If you do NOT have a bootable CDROM, set the machine to boot from floppy first and download a file to make a boot floppy from at www.bootdisk.com

If you do not have a floppy drive, then we will have to do something else.

Setting it to boot fom a blank hard drive will present the problem you describe. You have to get a bootable device to load the operating system.

[dhorsman2000]

[highlight]"What you need to do is set the machine to boot from CD first and if you have a bootable CDROM you are all set to load. ""[/highlight]


Is this where I hold F2 down and go to the boot menu, then + or - until the CD-Rom option goes to the top?



[highlight]"If you do NOT have a bootable CDROM, set the machine to boot from floppy first and download a file to make a boot floppy from at www.bootdisk.com"[/highlight]


Can I do this with my CD burner and CD-R discs? or do I need another type disc? I've tried burning a CD from bootdisc.com and then setting the CD rom to boot first, but no luck, maybe I'm doing something wrong??

Thanks for the help !!!!

[GX1_Man]

[highlight]"What you need to do is set the machine to boot from CD first and if you have a bootable CDROM you are all set to load. ""[/highlight]


Is this where I hold F2 down and go to the boot menu, then + or - until the CD-Rom option goes to the top?

This is where you enter the BIOS/Setup area and choose the boot order. The exact key combination to get their should be on screen when the  machine starts up. (What make and model is this?)

[highlight]"If you do NOT have a bootable CDROM, set the machine to boot from floppy first and download a file to make a boot floppy from at www.bootdisk.com"[/highlight]


Can I do this with my CD burner and CD-R discs? or do I need another type disc? I've tried burning a CD from bootdisc.com and then setting the CD rom to boot first, but no luck, maybe I'm doing something wrong??

The file should not be copied to a CDR directly. It has to be burned as an ISO by Nero or some other program. That will make it bootable.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=how+to+burn+iso