Reformatting question...

[Valerie Sundberg]

I reformatted my computers hardrive, intending to reinstall everything from it's provided recovery disk.  However, now when I start the computer, it isn't reading or booting from the cd drive, so won't recognize the cd.  It just scans the hard drive and says invalid boot disk.  I tried pushing F8 to go to the boot menu and reset the order it boots from the drive, but it no longer shows all the loading information and there seems to be no time to do this.  Is there any other way to access the boot menu?  I no longer get a prompt when the computer loads, just the incorrect disk message.  Anyone have any ideas how to fix this?
Thanks in advance!

[Flame]

Have you contacted your computer manufacturer about this issue?

[glb]Flame[/glb]

[Valerie Sundberg]

Yes,
 Since my warranty has expired, they want 20 doallrs before they will even talk to me.

[mathew_hermary]

What version of windows, what kind of drives do u have, do u have a floppy drive and cd, or just cd. More details would be nice.

[Valerie Sundberg]

Sorry about that.  It's an older (98 or 99?) E-machine.  It had windows 98 on it.  It has both a cd and floppy drive.  I am trying to restore it through the cd.  It has an Intel Celeron 400 mhz processor and 32 meg ram.  I hope this helps.  

[mathew_hermary]

try making a windows xp boot disk floopy on is best but can be don on cdrom. and go from there.

[wrwss]

If your going to re-install win98 go to  www.bootdisk.com  and download a windows 98 boot disk and then boot from there.That disc will install all necessary drivers for the cd-rom and then you can install 98. If you are trying to install xp,dont bother,you dont have enough ram to do so.you need at least 128m and should have 256m

[Valerie Sundberg]

I tried the boot disk, but it has the same problem as the cd.  The computer isn't booting from either the disk or the cd drive.  It just goes straight from the E-machines loading screen to this message "Searching for boot record from IDE-0 ..OK" and then "Invalid sysytem disk, replace the disk and press any key"

[GreatWhiteTiger]

you might want to try looking in the FAQ section of the e-machines website. F8 might not be the key to get into bios