Windows 95 GUI won't start

theshadow

Hi there,
A friend asked me to have a look at his PC, Compaq Presario 5520. He was getting the following error:
Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, then press any key
I located a windows 95 startup disk and checked the c: drive which looked fine so I copied over the system files using "a:\sys c:"
Now the machine boots but only to c:\ prompt. The windows 95 screen flashs briefly before returning to the c:\ prompt. Any way of fixing this without re-installing OS?
Thanks in advance.

sceptre

What happens if you type

win

at the c prompt?

(I'm not offering this as a solution, just an aid to diagnosis)

ColmOT [MSFT]

You may need to edit the autoexec.bat file to tell it to load win.com.

Windows 95 was a long time ago, and I can't really remember much about Win 9x in general :-(

See if this helps.

OfflerCrocGod

Hold it!! do you work for the Evil Empire Colm?, I mean Microsoft - sorry slip of the tounge, well do you?.

ColmOT [MSFT]

Yeah - I do...

I figured, I might as well help people since I'm in the development side of things in Microsoft...

No harm in free support!! :-)

Capt'n Midnight

You'll need to check the msdos.sys file

in C:
dir msdos.sys /as
if it is 6 bytes long then it's one from a floppy and won't work - it has paths to windows etc .
you can copy one from a windows 98 pc - it's just a text file.

attrib msdos.sys -r -a -s -h
quickest way to copy it form a win98/5 PC is to
xcopy msdos.sys a: /h
xcopy amsdos.sys c: /h

if you press F8 on startup and then choose step x step you should see how far it gets now..

The splash screen is only a bmp image (in IO.sys) so you can have it displayed on a boot floppy. .. (the bar at the bottom is just a pallete changing loop - no processing is used..)

I take it you have already typed in WIN to get it working..

theshadow

Cheers all. Actually I found the solution late last night on microsoft support site, it was the msdos.sys all right.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;149110&
Thanks again.