I have an old XP machine on which I play my games, but I have encountered a problem at startup.
When I switch the machine on, I see

Invalid system disk
Please replace the disk and press any key.

It happens to be the first Schizm disk, so I take it out, press a key, but the original error then repeats. It then repeats the message whatever I do with the CD player.

Can someone please advise me if this is a known problem with an easy solution, or if I should abandon the venerable XP and see if the game will play on Windows 7?

petert

Problem located.
Someone had put a floppy in the computer, and I had not checked that - had not used a floppy for at least 3 years.

It's been a long time since I've seen that message.
I'd get it on Windows 98 computers that I played DOS games on using DOS mode -- and it always meant I'd left a floppy in the drive.

I think you can set your BIOS not to boot from floppy, but it's probably best to take the floppy out anyway.

That was kind of a flash back to the past! I remember that message on my Windows 98 computers when a floppy was left in the drive. Wow... floppies. To be honest, it's not all that long ago that I finally threw mine all away. Nothing important on them and no floppy disk player any more anyway!

I still put a floppy drive in every computer I build.
And I had a USB floppy for the Mac while I was using it.

It's important for retro gamers to have a floppy drive for DOS games which were only released on floppy (of which there are MANY which are not available at GOG). One such game is Heart of China, which was only available on 5.25" or 3.5" floppy.

Make sure that your hard drive is OK. You can get the same message from a failed boot sector of your HDD. Normally, when the OS is installed, it will change the boot order so that the hard drive is first in the boot order and the CD drive after. If this is a new occurrence I would be concerned that this is a hard drive issue.



That is why I design my installers to work with files copied to a folder on the hard drive. If a user does not have a floppy in his PC, if the user can find a PC with a floppy drive, then he can copy the files from the floppies to thumb drive, CD or some such to transfer them to the target PC. HoC is one of the games for which I have a new installer. It supports 3.5", 5.25", VGA and EGA versions.

To anyone thinking of getting a USB external floppy, be sure you get one that can read both DD and HD disks.

Does that mean I can use a floppy USB external drive on my iMac computer?

I have an old LaCie USB floppy drive that I bought years ago and which I've used with my iMac. However that brand is now at a collector's price new at Amazon.

I don't know if all brands are compatible, but ***This Sabrent USB floppy drive*** is a reasonable price and the description says it works with
* Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8
* MAC OS X

Be aware that a new Mac cannot read old Mac-formatted floppies without additional software.
However it can read PC floppies just fine. They pop up on the desktop similar to when you insert a CD.

Thanks Jenny. We have a Toshiba USB floppy drive connected to a Windows7 PC. Maybe it would work if I connected it to my iMac?