AdamA

Hi.
I was just given a computer from my sister because she couldn't get it to work anymore. When I turn it on it boots up for about 15 secs and then says 'missing operating system'. My sister doesn't know what she did to it.

My questions are: Do I need to download a bootdisk and boot it from that?
How can I get into bios on this thing?
How the heck does someone 'accidently' lose the OS?

Thanks for any and all help,
Adam

(I've been told it has win95, so do I have to use a win95 bootdisk?)

mark3567

Hi,

A couple of things.

First of all, if you are going to do a format and reinstall, then you must have the operating system disks.

Second, if you need a boot disk, you can get it at Bootdisk.com and a win98 boot disk will work as will a win95 disk. I would (if I were you) opt for the win98 disk.

Almost forgot, to get into BIOS setup menu, you need to hold down as the computer start either the DEL key, or the F2 key, or the F8 key....what I am saying is that depending upon the manufacturer, that function is assigned to a different key. Most are the DEL key, but combinations of the F keys are also used..

Prophet

Your best bet is to boot into bios and restore to default also it should have an option to detect masters and slaves make sure it's on auto and then watch the post and see if it comes up with a hard drive. alot of times this message will come up if the drive is messed up or if bios is set not to detect it.

AdamA

OK. I found out that the original bootdisk I made didn't work because the floppy disk was bad or corrupted or something. So I got some new floppies and made another one. The computer did successfully boot off of the disk.

So then I was able to fdisk to delete partitions and create new ones. THEN, I could format my C drive.

Now all I need to do is find a Win95 startup disk (I really should have thought of that earlier, but I didn't know if I'd get this far). I guess I could just go buy one, but I'll check around first.

ANYWAY, thank you both for the help and for bearing with me and my somewhat limited computer skills.

One more thing; what's a really good way to learn all about DOS, bios, operating systems and hardware? I didn't register here just to fix a problem, but I really want to learn as much as I can about computers. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks again!
AdamA

dai

when you format make C patition about 10g for the operating system,and everthing else keep on another partition.
if later on you have to reformat then you don't lose and have to reinstall everything

Immortal

This should help you.
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
Then just select 95.