What is a system disk?

Please help me.

Recently i bought a second hand laptop in fine working order. A friend gave me this book about installing XP and what to do. The first thing it said was to format the hard drive so as to get rid of all files if you had all the program software you needed on cd (Office etc) and the new operating system in my case XP proffesional. So i formatted my hard drive clearing it of anything it had on it and when i re-booted the computer, it said please insert system disk. What is a system disk and how do i get a copy for my Samsung GT8000 series laptop. Help please as i am having a broadband connection fitted on Tuesday.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Jaspreet Bal

This question was answered on February 16, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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A system disk is a diskette with Windows system files and necessary setup files Its purpose is to be able to boot your system in the event that the hard drive fails to do so It is also used to setup a hard drive By sticking the system disk into Drive A and booting, your computer can get the necessary files it needs to boot up off of that disk instead of the hard drive.

In this case though it looks to me the only you would have to do in your case is install the Windows Xp cd and complete the install

You stated that you followed the instructions that was given to you with the Windows Xp cd.

When you re-boot a computer that does not any operating system files in always displays that message

Follow these steps to complete the install:

>Re-boot your computer

>Quickly open up the cd player and insert the Xp installation Cd

> In a couple of seconds you should see a messegage at the bottom of the screen that states "to boot ftom cd press any key" Do so and follow the instructions and you should sucessfully install your operating system.

About the author

Posted by Felix of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on February 16, 2003

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