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Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: clam on July 22, 2003, 11:25

Title: boot sector problem ?
Post by: clam on July 22, 2003, 11:25

have a problem with my laptop (toshiba tecra 8200)
it takes a very long time to boot up then can crash (system busy screen) for no reason.
i wanted to format the c drive and reload all my software but my external floppy (f: drive)doesn't load up mt boot disk when i restart the laptop.

when i tried to run scan disk after a while i got a message saying that there was another program running (which there wasn't).
i also tried to load so anti virus software and when it started to scan the boot sector it wouldn't stop.
can anyone help.

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: Clive on July 22, 2003, 11:33

Hi Clam,  :welcome:  Our techies will be back very soon (probably within the hour) and they will help you solve your problem.

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: Clive on July 22, 2003, 11:34

In fact one has just turned up!   ;D

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: lobo on July 22, 2003, 11:38

@clam
Check in bios that it is set to boot from floppy, if you still cant boot from floppy copy the installation files to the hard drive and install from there,

Brian ;D

 

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: clam on July 24, 2003, 00:02

thanks for the help
but i am a bit of a novice with computers so
don't really understand what youv'e told me to do ???

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: Sandra on July 24, 2003, 00:41

I think what Lobo is suggesting is to copy the CAB files from your OS cd to a folder on your hard drive along with the windows installer file and .exe then you can run the installation from there.
As I am not sure exactly which files you need it may be better to do the next bit instead.
If you right click on the cd and select open you can select all the files and copy the cd across to a folder to install from.
Which OS are you using by the way :-*

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: clam on July 24, 2003, 12:09

thanks for your help

 :)

Title: Re:boot sector problem ?
Post by: lobo on July 24, 2003, 14:01

Quote

when i tried to run scan disk after a while i got a message saying that there was another program running (which there wasn't).

Try and run Scandisk in Safe Mode (press F8 at bootup and select safemode)when windows loads there are a lot of programs running in the background that are not visable

If you are using Windows 98 copy the win98 folder from your Windows CD to your hard drive and you can install from that folder instead of the CD

Brian ;D