Urgent Computer Help

[stray15]

My parents computer doesn't start up. I was in the process of installing Norton Anti-virus and I had to many programs running, i guess, well the computer froze so I did the CONTROL+ALT+DELETE thing and now after it restarted goes to a black screen and says "non-system disk or disk error..." But there is no disk in the drive. What can I do? The last thing I wanna do on my sunday afternoon is reformat a computer.

HELP GUYS!!

[toman]

if it's a "pre-packaged" computer like dell, compaq etc., it probably came with some sort of recovery CD. Try booting with that. Other than that, I dunno, sorry.

[adrian jaye]

Hey Stray,

There's a lot of stuff it could be,

need some more info..

1) what operating system.
2) did it work before and for how long
3) do you have a rescue disk or CD
4) what's your level of knowledge with PC's

I'll certainley try and hep you, I'll give you a few things to try.
However, work means I'm not always available at a PC,
e-me at Adrian@ajansz.source.co.uk

things to try

1) Boot disk,
If you have a boot disk/recovery disk, try loading from that, so at least you get the command prompt c:>

2) Loading
when you switch on your PC, does it do the BIOS and RAM check's check

3) Hard drive detect
You might need to get into the BIOS, (when loading press DEL) try and find the setup menu, hard drive menu, autosetup.

basically your trying to get the BIOS to find your harddrive

a lot of things could be the problem.

so e-me with the above details and tell me exactly what it does,
from switching it on, on screen messages, bleeps etc.

laters

[stray15]

I found an old Norton Zip recovery disk that I made a long time ago. The computer works now.


The problem now is, my mom bought Norton Anti-virus 2002 and she wants me to put it on the computer. I started installing it and it eventually says that it can't write to drive C or something. We tried it on my moms laptop also and it does the same thing. Is it the disk? Or both Computers?

Thanks for the help guys.