Help! Operating System Not Found?
 

Got a call from a friend who just booted up her computer and she's getting an error message saying "operating system not found". I'm guessing it's a virus.

What's the best course of action? It's an HP computer running Win98.

She should try a window 98 boot disk if she has one or get a hold of one.


Someone should back me up on this thought... I am no expert.

I had the same problem a while back but it was a problem with my hard drive.

Boot from a boot disk and if it looks ok
try sys c: to transfer system files and then reboot:thumbsup

yea, sounds like a harddrive problem to me aswell....

she have a boot disc?

sounds like it's time to format C

peopel actually still use win98? omg :glugglug

Do the boot disk.

Its possidle that she got a boot sector virus.

Did some quick research on this..... It could be a bad hard drive or disconnected cable, but she can get to a DOS prompt ont he c: drive so that's not it.

I'm guessing it might be the battery on her mother board. This helps to store the basic bios and boot strap instructions, and if this batter dies..... the computer looses this basic info. Also, her clock was off the last time I used her computer.

Thannks everyone.

Is it a laptop...My gf had the same issue..turned out her battery on her laptop was loose...Took me about 2 hours to finger it out.

I did get hacked once, and the bastard simply deleted the windows directory. If you can get a boot disk, check out the directory structure to make sure everything is where it should be before panicking. Then do a scandisk on the drive (thoroughly). If it's the drive, I would suggest just buying a new drive. No point waiting for this to happen again.

Drives don't last as long as they used to.

EDIT: I had a drive fail because my fan wasn't cooling it enough. If you do get a new drive, maybe get a hardcore fan, too, esp. if she's having a hot summer.

It could be the Master File Allocation Table. There's a program I can't think of at the moment that will fix this in a couple minutes if you don't fuck it up anymore.

try the sys c: first:thumbsup

Sounds like something corrupted her win98 install.. she might have to re-install.