Here is the skinny.

The PC is a Dell 2400 Dimension desktop. I have spent endless time with Dell on the phone, frankly I am not impressed with the advice I was given. I have narrowed the problem down to a "simple one". However I am having trouble with the so called simple problem.

Symptom:
When the pc boots to the HD "invalid system disk"
I corrected this with the device driver from the dell website.
The hd has a fresh format on the drive so it is clean. The user I am helping wished to have a clean install "out of the box new if you will". After running the format/u as told b dell techs, the pc will not boot from the CD rom. Missing drivers right, I think so also.

I checked the bios boot secquence and everything was in order. I removed the cd rom and double checked it in another pc. The drive functions correctly as it did before the format. I feel that if I had the device driver for the drive I could create a bootdisk load the path to both the cd and the hd and then run the restore cd. Here is the catch, online dell website there are 9 different roms avaliable for the 2400 model, plus they are all windows based installs.

So do any of you hardware ninjas out there have a good cd boot disk toolkit I can use?

The machine was an xp sp1, the HD is 100% formated. NTFS partioned


The machine worked fine prior to the restore. Everything worked correctly, the reason for the restore. The pc is to be given to his child, while he upgrades to a laptop.

Thanks all
Be safe and Stay free
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas
may all your tech wishes be filled on Christmas day