posted on October 16, 2001 09:04:34 AM new
My daughter and I attended a garage sale at the local high school's maintenance barn. We bought 2 outdated computers with monitors, keyboards, and mouse(s?)plus other stuff, all for $10.00. The school has recently upgraded their computers, so these are probably from the mid- to late-90's models. One is a ProGen and the other a Gateway 2000. When we got them all hooked up, we turned them on and could not get beyond the start-up screen that has an error "Non-system disk or Disk Error. Please insert correct disk and strike any key when ready."
No matter what I try, I cannot get to a C:> prompt, or get Windows to load. I have tried the F1 diagnostics thing, but changes I make don't make any difference. I cannot even tell what is on the darn thing! Do you think this means they reformatted the C: drives before disposing of the computers?
What should I do with them? Must I throw them away? A local yokel computer place (remember, we live in the sticks!) said the school should be contacted to provide the operating system disks, and it may have been illegal to sell the units without them.
I have a hard time believing the head maintenance man is going to be able to force them to dig up the old disks.
posted on October 16, 2001 09:21:08 AM new
Have you tried booting it up with a boot disk? If it's mid to late '90's they could have either '95 or Win3.x on them.. so you would need something from one of those systems.
If you can get it 'working' with a boot disk, then maybe you can see what really is going on. If the HD is wiped and needs to be formatted you'll be able to do it with the bootdisk.
As far as any software that came with it.. someone has things a little bit backwards. It is not illegal for them to sell the computer w/out the software installed. But rather, it's "illegal" for them to sell the computer with the software installed and not hand over the disks or certificates of authenticity.
edited to add:
Personally I wouldn't waste my time. As to if you should get rid of them, examine why you bought them in the first place and decide if it's worth the investment of time to get it/them up and running. The odds are that even if you parted it out, the parts would be worthless to your present system and would go for next to nothing on ebay. Unless you're looking for a toy computer for a kid or something older to play older games on .. that's about all those things would probably be good for.
[ edited by rosiebud on Oct 16, 2001 09:30 AM ]
posted on October 16, 2001 09:27:59 AM new
Hi rosibud! I am running windows98 on my own pc, so I don't have a boot disk for 95. Is it possible to create one from a download somewhere? (I am assuming it is on Windows95, but I can't get to a dos prompt to even check!)
I can't even tell if anything is installed on it, although it must have something to even get to that point. Phoenix something? is that the BIOS?
posted on October 16, 2001 09:33:42 AM new
Phoenix would be the bios. I remember seeing that on one of my way older computers..
You could *try* a boot disk from 98, it's certainly not going to hurt anything and it might work.. *sorry, I can't remember if it does or not.* Otherwise you can do a search online and see if someone might have a download available... I kinda doubt it but it doesn't hurt to look.
Your next bet would be either a friend who's still running 95 .. or maybe one on ebay?.. lol
posted on October 16, 2001 12:30:56 PM new
I remember seeing a "universal" boot disk for sale on eBay several times but it was basically a windows 98 disk and was supposed to work for windows 95.
Those older systems are fine for word processing - e-mail - and for things like running a CNC.
I bought a pentium system at garage sale for $20 and it runs my desk top CNC mill just fine. I have two copies of win 95 left over from when I went to 98 because I never buy the upgrade and feed disks to it I do a clean install. It's nivce to have the extra systems if you need one.
I have bought a couple copies of win95 at garage sales for $10 and $15 - the full shrink wrap version.
posted on October 16, 2001 12:49:48 PM new
Back in the early '90's computers were set up to either boot from a disk or look to the hard drive. It sounds like your is one that was programed to boot only from the disk drive, or else the A drive is bad since it can't get past that.
posted on October 16, 2001 02:39:04 PM new
First thing to try is to take the Floppy out of the drive there should be nothing in the floppy drive at all.
Normally when you get these errors this is the problem , The other reason would be you need to get into the bios for some reason the bios have changed you will need to go in and make c drive the bootable drive.
if that don't work there is a good chance that the MBR ( Master Boot Record ) has been deleted or corupted..
When You can't get to dos and to the C promt it means the computer is booting with Ram disk which just enables you to scan disk formate or run CD rom if the computer has one . http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
Email [email protected]
posted on October 16, 2001 11:32:07 PM new
They probably removed the hard drives. The computers might be worth nothing but you can always use a hard drive for something. When the computer starts up, does the bios show what is installed??? Like hard drive, floppy, etc.?
posted on October 17, 2001 12:32:38 AM new
It just sounds like they wiped the hard drive before selling it. You'll have to install an operating system.
BTW re "illegal to sell without the software": actually, the restriction is kinda the other way around. There's a distinction between Windows install disks which are intended for sale to the public and those which are intended for sale with a computer (the latter being OEM -- Original Equipment Manufacturer). It's illegal (or at least Microsoft has convinced a lot of people it is) to sell the OEM Windows CD without also selling a computer with it, but it doesn't work the other way 'round.
-gaffan-
