[SOLVED] Hangs at "OS load in progress"...Help!

I partioned and attempted to format C:, but had to stop in the middle of the process to leave for a dinner date and shutdown my machine. When I came home a few hours ago and turn on the puter, the booting process seems to hang at the "OS load in progress..." message at the top of the left hand corner of the screen. I have tried using DOS boot utilities, but to no avail. Can anyone give me any CLUE as to what the problem is?? My ultimate goal is to reinstall my Win98SE and get my machine back to normal. Any SPEEDY response will be IMENSLEY appreciated.

Stuck-in-a-loop,
Sam

 

You put your Win98 Boot disc in the floppy and boot to it but you cannot run "format C:" ?

Why not just run FDISK and start over?
or try another boot disc.

 

no, the computer is not reading any of the drives to boot anything from. I am coming to the awful conclusion that the drive is done for. Enough of a headache. Been thru the ringer...thanks!

sam

 

If you can't put the boot disk in the floppy drive and start the computer and get to dos, only other thing I can think of is to try the restoration c.d. if your computer came with one.

 

I've never killed a format in process, but even so, if it killed the HD
you should still be able to boot from a floppy. Does the Bios "Setup" option come up where you can check to make sure it is set to boot to A: before C: ?

And again, have you tried using another Win98 boot disc?
http://bootdisk.com/original.htm

 

Yes I did. I have the Boot Up options in BIOS set to boot from floppy only and diabled the others. When I pop in a boot disk into the A:\ and restart the computer, the same thing is happening: machine runs to the "OS load in progress", and hangs. Not actually "hangs", but if I hit any key, it tells me to "Insert bootable media." No matter what drive I have boot up. I have tried the NEC recovery disk again as well...but to no avail...any more ideas?

 

Okay, this is where I've been stuck for the past week and I have gotten no further with ANY boot utilities: When I start the machine, it will get past the first splash screen at startup ok, and the next screen, (OS loading in progress..." and hangs. Will go no further...If I press any keys, I then get the message "Insert bootable media in the appropriate drive". If I hit F1, I can get into my BIOS setup and have tried everything I've been told to try, including resetting factory CMOS settings to default. I have also tried numerous combinations of jumper settings as well.

I have 2 and ONLY 2 questions:

1. What exactly is missing from my boot process?

2. How do I FIX THIS!!!!!!!?????

Slowly going insane (and taking my girlfriend with me),
Sam

 

What boot disk are you using?

Go here and download one so we know what we're working with......don't save it to floppy, save to desktop, double click and follow instructions to create it.


http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

 

As far as boot disks, since I am unable to do ANYTHING on my machine, I have been using the boot disk I've had since before any problems occured. I am unable to create any others on MY machine, so my g/f and I have been downloading 3rd party boot utilites from the internet and saving them on 3 1/2 disks to run on mine. Am I doing something wrong as far as boot disks are concerned?

 

You can't just save them to the floppy.....they must be executed to create a boot disk.......

 

HOT DAMN! YOU DON'T SAY!!

What I mean is, I have been doing the boot disk thing aaaallll wrong! Can a boot disk for my machine, (Win95/98SE) on my g/f's computer who is running WinME? Perhaps I need a total tutorial on creating boot disks.. NOW I am getting somewhere....Any info on how I can do this correctly?

(Don't I feel sheepish..)

 

If you'll just follow my above instructions from your g/f's machine....you should be able to create a 98 boot disk......double clicking it from her desktop isn't going to hurt her computer.....she'll be prompted to insert a blank floppy disk.

 

Gotcha. (I am the g/f) I am doing the fast typing and the posting in his userid cuz he is new to the forums. I just got finished downloading the Win98 boot disk application from the link you provided...thanks, by the way..and I will go ahead and give it a shot right now. We do have a question in regards to the RIGHT kind of boot disk...If he is trying to ULTIMATELY get Win98SE back up and running, and has to install Win95 first, does that mean we should be creating a Win95 boot disk? Or is it a Win98 boot disk we need?

and thank you SO much for the speedy replies!!

cristyna77 and sammyworth

 

If he's going to reformat, just install 98.......you'll only need 95 to prove that you hold a license to the upgrade product.....I'm assuming the 98 disk is an upgrade disk, correct? 98 boot disk should be just fine

Hehe, I know what you mean about the 'slow' typers Type or get out of my way

 

Indeed it is the Win98 upgrade disk he has, so I am downloading the Win98SE boot app as we speak. (I grabbed the Win95 boot app in error) Also, I was wondering if perhaps you could specify the correct settings in his BIOS as far as disabled/Autoconfigured boot drives, etc..? Or is that asking for your right arm?