Can't find Operating system.

dandie_2

Having problems with my 4 year old Pentium 3 PC, using Windows 98 2nd Edition.
Basically, when trying to boot, I get a 'operating system not found' message. I can get into the BIOS settings.

I hit problems when I left the PC on for a few hours on it's own (At the logon prompt to Windows). When returning, it was on power save mode. Wigglin the mouse gave me a blue screen not dissimilar to the BIOS settings one. Message was something along the lines of 'Can't save to disk'.

Restarted the machine, and hit the problem outlined above when the machine tries to boot.

The usual reading noise from the hard drive isn't there, and I'm guessing that it may well have given up on me. Have checked the cables and what not and they seem ok.

What's the next step? Help!

Rafter

Suggest you take it to your local friendly pc repair man and see if they can recover all your files from your hard drive.

You can then try reinstalling windows and reformatting your hard drive to restore your system.

Probably not worth repairing a 4 year old machine so maybe time to get a new one.

This time suggest you also invest in an external backup drive that sits in the background backing up everything you do. Will only cost £200 but worth its weight in gold if something goes pear shaped with your pc and you risk losing everything.

Hope that helps.

R

dandie_2

Cheers. Let's say I'm not overly fussed about the contents of the drive that seems to be gubbed. Most of the content I want (photos, etc) is on CD.

Easy enough to pop a new drive in and get it all back up and running? I have the Windows 98 disk and a Gateway drivers disk, although windows was pre-installed.

woo

easy enough to pop in a new disk, if you have a windows boot disk you might be able to reinstall windows over the top of your old one.

might be worth a try before spending any cash.

dandie_2

By a boot disk do you mean a disk other than the actual windows 98 disk supplied with the machine?

Take it that will get the machine ready for firing up Windows. Then I can check through explorer whether my hard drive is indeed gubbed. If not, presumably there's something wrong with the boot itself.

woo

a boot disk has the ensential files to get you into your pc.
you should then be able to access your hard disk to see if it dead. if not you might well be able to go into the windows directory and use win.exe to start windows. or you can reintsall windows over the top.

you can make a boot disk by going into control panel add/remove programs. think the tab is call startup disk, or something similar.

dandie_2

Ok. Successfully put a new drive in last night.
Managed to FDISK it from the boot CD, then formatted from the Windows 98 disk.

Display wasn't looking too good when I went in, but imagine I was missing a load of drivers. Installed the drivers for my video card which I think has sorted the display - will I need to find and install drivers for all the other devices I have?? (CDRW, DVD, sound card, modem, etc) What is the best way to do this?

I have the original CD installation disks for the video card and CDRW, the rest was on the machine when I got it.

Godders

You will need drivers and the best place is the internet. You will need to find out who manufactured your parts (they should have makers and model numbers etc stamped on them) then try the manufacturers sites first.

If all else fails try somewhere like https://www.driverguide.com