ascentia j20 series lap top help

Im having a problem at start up. here is the best i can do to explain it.
it ask to start with cd rom or without. with either choice it automatically wants to start by reading the a: drive and it says it can not read it and ask to abort retry or fail. then it says
Device name: msd001
no drives found
bad command
not found :\command.com
not found :\extract.exe
not found :\ readme.txt

and then goes to
a:\


what do i do?

it is windows 95/98 operating system

 

Hi godgirl and welcome to TSG. So you are not able to start at all, just ending at an a:\> prompt?

You shouldn't get an a:\> prompt unless there is a floppy in the floppy drive, be sure to remove any that may be present, and try again.

If the messages continue, they are coming from the autoexec.bat and config.sys files. When did they start?

When the computer first begins to boot, press and hold the ctrl key until you see a "Startup" menu. Select the "safe mode" option

Once you are in safe mode, go to Start>Run and enter: msconfig

On the msconfig "General" page, remove the checks for "process config.sys" and "process autoexec.bat" and click OK; then reboot.

Does it reboot normally?

These instructions are for Win98, if you have Win95 you will not have msconfig. In that case, tap the f8 key repeatedly when first starting to get the Startup menu and instead choose the "command prompt" option. Once you are at the c:\> prompt enter each bold line:

ren autoexec.bat autoexec.old
ren config.sys config.old
ctrl-alt-del (to reboot)