do my pc have a bad hard drive or is the cdrom is bad

[Donald Fisher]

I am working on an old computer that had windows98 that I wiped out and when I start it up it goes to this black screen that says boot disk failure so when I press enter it makes this clicking noise that seems like its trying to boot but stays on the same error message when I put in the floppy disks its 4 so when the last floppy finish it says insert win server 2000 cd-rom at the bottom it says please wait and then it goes back to the insert screen what can I do to get it running its an old campus pc I know that it was running but windows98 was outdated can someone help me with this pc

 

[8350rocks]

Sounds like your CD drive is bad...if it boots from floppy, but errors when you put in a CD. Are all your connections good on the CD drive? Check those first...if that doesn't solve it...just spend $20 on a new drive.

 

[Donald Fisher]

Sounds like your CD drive is bad...if it boots from floppy, but errors when you put in a CD. Are all your connections good on the CD drive? Check those first...if that doesn't solve it...just spend $20 on a new drive.

thanks but how do I check to see if its bad

 

[8350rocks]

If it won't read a CD while your PC is trying to install a fresh windows OS...check the connections on the back of the CD drive inside the case...if they are not loose...the drive is bad.

 

[anxiousinfusion]

In your BIOS - What is the boot order set to? Can the BIOS identify the make/model of the CD drive?

I can recommend investigating a boot from USB flash drive option. Maybe use Linux as a testbed.

 

[8350rocks]

In your BIOS - What is the boot order set to? Can the BIOS identify the make/model of the CD drive?

I can recommend investigating a boot from USB flash drive option. Maybe use Linux as a testbed.

If he was running a system from the last decade, I would explore that possibility, but I am not sure he can get access to Linux, and with a CD Drive that was running on a windows 98 machine...the machine is at minimum 10 years old...it's a good possibility the drive is just bad.