can't access windows

[misskellibad1]

Hi all. My girlfriend is at it again! She asked me to wipe out her daughter's system and start fresh with windows 95. She didn't tell me that the computer won't fully boot. I get "disk I/O error replace disk and hit any key". Any ideas what's going on?
Thanks in advance!

[phishhead]

I would start from scratch since you dont know the pc...unplug all cables and ribbons and replace them go into the bios and put everything back to default and do an auto detect on the IDE devices. then try to fdisk and reformat.

[misskellibad1]

thanks for the quick reply phish! Will try that right now.

[misskellibad1]

Hi there again! I did as you suggested and it did not work
Still get the same error. Any other suggestions?

[phishhead]

when does the error appear during the POST. or going into windows. did a search for the error didn't come up with anything. can you boot with a floppy or cd.

[Tinker]

Like phish said does it boot from a 3.5 floppy? I had that same thing happen when I had a bad MBR on the HDD. If it should boot from the floppy you may have a bad HDD......

[Big Booger]

Tinker and Phish are on their game like two old school pros taking Larry Bird to the hoop.



The MBR is either damaged or the HDD is damaged. Why on earth would she go from XP back to 95.. as 95 is no longer being supported by MS, and in fact, AFAIK, you cannot even update it from the MS site Leaves her PC exposed to a lot of critical updates, that AFAIK, she can no longer install.. not only that, but drivers are no longer being written for 95 in many cases

At the minimum, she should go with 98.. if at all possible

I use 95 at work, and it is a bummer.. really bad. I mean I get blue screens daily. Everytime we boot the PC it loads a blue screen failure, and we cannot reinstall it, because the comp is loaded with all the latest updates and patches

[phishhead]

if you can boot to a floppy I would fdisk the partitions then recreate them, format, then do an fdisk /mbr to repair the mbr.

[misskellibad1]

Hi all!
The problem occurs during the post, can't boot from floppy. I've done some reading too so maybe the hard drive is fried.
@ Booger, she's not going back to anything. This is her daughter's computer and it has always ran 95. She just wanted me to wipe it out (it's just for games, schoolwork, etc., not even internet)
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Also @ Booger, nice analogy there.