boot up problem

All my friends are having computer problems.

This one is an old cannon notebool running Win 98 SE. Suddenly when booting up the message is "operating systme not found." It will not recognize the win 98 disk on start up and dispays the same message even when I change the bios to look at the CD first. The only way I can get anything is to use a win98 start up disk. When I check C there are around ten dos files there. I tried to us my disk Norton Utilities to check for erased files and it says there are none on the whole c drive. When I try to copy DOS start up files on C, they are there. When I restart, I get the same message and then when I put the win98 start up disk in and restart, the copied files are no longer there. Could this be a virus?

Thanks

 

It could this be a virus, but try this first boot using the Startup diskette, type: SYS C:, and reboot. The SYS command will reload the boot system files to C:.

 

Thanks for answering.

I could not do sys c: from either the c drive or a drive. The a drive gives me an invalid function.

Another thing, when I boot up with the win 98 start up disk, it says that the C dirve does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition.

Should I start with a format and Fdisk?

Thanks,
Andy

 

Wow, not good.

Your Windows Startup diskette should have a Sys.Com file, which is strange that you got the error.

Oh well your hard drive is toast and needs big fixing.

Boot with your Windows Startup diskette, execute FDISK, remove any existing partitions, then create a DOS partition and make it active. After that, you can proceed to format the disk and install Windows.

 

In case you weren't aware, all the data on the drive is gone.

 

Thanks for your help.

I think the drive is toast.

I tried to format it and it would not do it.

I tried to FDISK and it said NO FIXED DRIVE.

I think it is toast.

Thanks,

Andy

 

It does sound like it is toast. Does BIOS see it? Some BIOS have a utility that may be able to fix it, so check the options.

 

Thanks for your help.

I checked the BIOS and there is no recognition of a hard drive. I should have checked this first (easy to say now).

Thanks,

Andy

 

Most hard drives are warrantied for three years, if it is older than that then you are out of luck. If not check it on the manufacturer
web site, they will send you a replacement with no hassle.

 

Try one last thing. If you have a Norton Rescue Disk set
try booting with it and try to restore your CMOS settings.
Worth a try at this point.

 

Thanks for your help

I tried Norton Rescu disk and it did not recognize any disks other than A

It is gone.

Thanks,

Andy