Floppy problems

[format c:]

Well here goes, I have an Asus TUSL2-C mother board with a Pentuim III 1 ghz CPU
512 megs sdram ( Micron )
Soundblaster live x gamer
Asus v7700 deluxe agp 32 meg video card
Realtek 10/100 nic
2 30 gig Quantum fireball as drives ATA 100 7200 rpm ( One is 6months old , the other is new )
LG cd burner ( SLave)
LG cd rom drive ( Master )
Enermax 350w PSU
Mini server case
Was running Win xp home edition
I decided to go back to Win ME and return to fat 32 since all my drives were NTFS
I toss in my Win ME boot disk and when the menu appears , there are no choices , just one menu item, Nothing works
I reboot with the 3 finger solute, I get the full menu but when I go to use the dowm arrow it locks up , I have to reboot and try again
I tried another floppy disk , floppy cable, I even pulled all the memory and tried with just one of 3 sticks installed , I still got the same problem, I replaced the floppy drive, same problem
I have also ecperienced my disk manger boot disk freezing up ( I use this to zero fill drives )
This is all DOS level stuff, I have seen minor problems in Windows , I went to patch a game I have and I got an error that it could not read the file ( Which was on my second hard drive )
Any ideas would be appreciated, Is my board messed up ?
Help

[Froghead]

Hi Format C. I'm not sure what to say about the WINME boot disk as I've never seen any use for one. Nowadays I only use a 98 bootdisk to load Win95/98. Win98SE and newer boots from the CD. If you're using a Disk Manager like EZ-BIOS or DiskManager you may have to uninstall or disable them before running fdisk to remove the Non-Dos partitions (NTFS). I won't ask why you're dumping WINXP in favour of WINME - must have a reason. :-)
Also CD Burners generally prefer to be on the secondary master and can get cranky as a slave.
Don't ask me why. Another thing to check as stupid as it sounds. Did you disconnect the keyboard and mouse and maybe plug them back in backwards? I've seen it a dozen times.

Happy Holidays.

[Mr_Miyagi]

i assume you've tried another "boot disk" you know works?

i am not familiar with winme boot disks so dont know what "options" should be shown, but one would assume you can test the pc (if you can get a dos prompt) to see if the hardware is ok or not.

doesn't winme cdrom "boot" or am i confusing it with 98?

[Archer]

Try booting with your XP CD and use the recovery console to reformat the drive back to FAT32.

MKB Q229716

FORMAT
format drive : /Q /FS:file-system
Use this command (where /Q performs a quick format of the drive, drive is the drive letter of the partition to format /FS:file-system specifies the type of file system to use [FAT, FAT32, or NTFS]) to format the specified drive to the specified file system.

If a file system is not specified, the existing file system format is used, when available


BTW I`m sure I`ve read it posted somewhere about previous boot disks not working on newer OSs

[format c:]

When this problem started I tried another boot disk and got the same thing, I have the upgrade version of Win ME so it does not boot , What was nice about the XP upgrade Cd is that I could boot up off of it
I prefer to use the same version of fdisk and format.com as the OS I am installing
I have some pictures of my monitor displaying the half menu but I don't know where to send them
I am going to contact the store where I bought the mother board

[TRICKPLAYER]

I beg to differ about millenium upgrade disk, I had a me upgrade disc before I upgraded to XP and
done quite a few instalations, It boots, starts install and then asks for win 98 disc to verify,
which it reads and tells you to eject, and reinsert me/up disc, and goes on to do a full clean ME install as with your XP upgrade.

[format c:]

The upgrade CD I have is the promotional upgrade which cost a lot less than the upgrade CD
Maybe that is the difference between your CD and Mine
Well I went out and bought the Asus cuv266 and 256 megs of PC 2100 ddr
No more floppy problems and I got Windows reinstalled fairly quickly , I am going to return the other board for warranty once I find the receipt , I was told I could contact Asus and RMA the board directly
I appreciate all the help and Happry New year to all !!!!!!