Hi
I'm trying to reinstall windows on a build I just finished. I used the HDD from my previous build and it says Operating System not found when I turn it on.
I set the cd drive to the first boot device but I am not prompted to boot from the 98 SE disk that is in the drive. Am I missing something? I've done this before but I don't remember it giving me any trouble like this.
wrote:Am I missing something?
A startup diskette?
I don't have one. Is there somewhere I can get an image of one?
Is there a way to get it to fdisk without a boot floppy? I tried to create one from the files on allbootdisks.com but I got a lot of errors about disk heads. I think all my floppy disks are damaged or something. I was able to boot from the windows 98 CD before on a different build but I dont seem to have the option on this computer.
Alternatively, where can I get floppy disks?
I ran into this problem a little while ago when I took a hard drive out of one rig and put it into another. I fixed it simply by entering the bios and formatting the drive from there. There should be an option there to format the drive without needing to go to the command prompt.
As you're having issues with boot disks, if my suggestion doesn't work then you could always put the drive into another computer and set it up as a slave drive, then enter windows from your main drive as normal and format the drive in question as you would any usb stick/drive/floppy etc
Can you confirm that you are unable to boot from any CD or only the Win 98 CD? If the boot from CD drive option is Ok, you can burn a CD of Linux Live ISO which has a nice 'GParted' application to format the hard disk provided you have a means to burn the CD. If not and the floppy drive too suspected to be having issues, then as borgie83 said, trying the harddisk on another PC is the way to go.
Way back in the day I used to get this error if I cleared the disk, but neglected to do a "sys c:" I believe it was. Or was it sys disk c:?
It would have been "sys c:" .
I agree that it would be useful to know if this system can boot from other bootable CD-ROM disks.
I managed to get a boot diskette written and ran fdisk. Then it said "no fixed disks present". I tried a different hard drive and it said the same thing. Any clues?
Also, borgie83, I looked in my BIOS and couldnt find a way to format the drive. I have the motherboard you recommended in this post:
I am assuming you have one as well. Is that the board you had when you formatted in BIOS?
Does the hard drive show up in the BIOS and the POST screen (i.e. upon bootup) ? Have you set it to be auto-detected by the BIOS, or did you specify the parameters manually? (Auto-detection is almost always the way to go, even if you think you know the parameters.)
What's the size of your harddrive? Have you checked the jumper configuration of your drive? Tried another IDE cable and are you sure your cable is connected the right way? Tried reset your BIOS to default?
I think it's not plugged on right. When I was assembling it I was just plugging stuff in wherever there was a connector. I was thinking like it was SATA I guess. Anyway I'll try plugging it all back in with the correct master/slave configurations when I get home.
Now that I think about it I am pretty sure I have the cd drive on the master connector at the end of the IDE cable and the only HDD on the slave connector. Might even be plugged into the second IDE port.
