Dell Dimension 4100. No matter what I do, or what I have plugged in or not plugged in, I get a a error message saying invalid boot disk in A:/. This is getting rather annoying. I just replaced the whole motherboard, thinking it would solve the problem (since I was at my pushing point with this before) but obviously its something else. Maybe the processor? But it boots up fine and I can get into the Bios, just cant get past that A:/ screen error. Any thoughts or ideas I can try?

have you tried unplugging your floppy drive and disabling it in the bios?

Ummm...have you tried swearing very loudly while kicking the **** outta it?
I had a simular problem....I reformated and upgraded to XP and all the stupid error messages left for good. (knock on wood).. I'll never buy another Dell......

Yes, floppy drive has been unplugged and plugged in and disabled. I just want to format the freakin HD, and I cant even get to that spot, even with a XP CD in there. Anything else? There has to be something im not getting. Maybe its my HD, but I tried about 3 of them in there :?

NO it is not like I took a job offer for Dell upper level technical support today....or is it


Anway on the 4100 as with the whole XPS/4100 Series the floppys were CRAP quality.

BUT if it does it when you disconnect the floppy AND change the boot order to CD-ROM then IDE....and all other devices disabled....well you have issues then.

CHANGE BOOT ORDER.

CHECK FLOPPY CABLE

Lol

Oh yea, boot order changed, and floppy cables are not even plugged in anymore. I just had HD and CD and video card in agp slot hooked up.

So, it looks like there was a bad HD somewhere to begin with, I got around that using a scan and format utility I had on CD. The floppy did die, wont read disks, so I just shut off the Floppy controller on the motherboard. Are these computers able to handle two IDE harddrives on the same ribbon?

should, provided the jumpers are all set correctly.

Check this link on boot disk errors. No problems on my Dim 8200 or Dim 4550.
http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportf...error&x=12&y=8