No Operating System Found

afriend4evr · #1 January 19th, 2006, 04:23 PM

When I put in a startup floppy and boot up my computer and go to dos prompt I get an error saying "no operating system found" I have tried reformatting the hard drive and it will not let me do that it will not let me do that. It will not let me reinstall windows either. I need help. my hard drive is western digital I am using windows 98SE with 128mb ram 500mhz pentium III. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

**Murray S.** · #2 January 19th, 2006, 04:46 PM

Howdy and welcome to CTH:

Could be one of three problems..

1: Bad hard-drive

2: IDE cable connected incorrectly or broken or;

3: Motherboard shot..

I would suggest going to the WD website and downloading their diagnostics program to a floppy.. Boot with that and see what comes up..

Murray

afriend4evr · #3 January 19th, 2006, 04:53 PM

thank you for your help I will try that and post another message as to the results.

**Murray S.** · #4 January 19th, 2006, 05:04 PM

Please do and we can go from there..

Murray

afriend4evr · #5 January 19th, 2006, 05:14 PM

I also mention that the message I also got was this:
1. the drive may need to be partitioned to create a partition on the drive, run fdisk from ms-dos command prompt.

2.You may be using 3rd party disk partitioning software. If you are using this type of software remove the emergency boot disk and restart your computer from a floppy disk.

3. Some viruses also cause your hard drive to not register. You can use a virus scanning program to check your computer for viruses.

The diagnostic tools were loaded successfully to drive C.

************************************************** **
I have kept all my anti-virus software up to date. Also I tried to run fdisk with no success, but I really don't know how to partition a drive.

**Murray S.** · #6 January 19th, 2006, 07:04 PM

Is this a new hard-drive or one that was formatted recently??

Did it always have Win 98/98SE or WinME on it??

Murray

afriend4evr · #7 January 19th, 2006, 08:00 PM

It always had windows 98SE on it and I have reformatted it a couple times but not lately.....no it's not a new hard drive, but when it was saying no operating system found I took that hard drive out and put an old one I had that was on a 6gb quantum bigfoot hard drive in the computer and it works good, but I want to put the bigger hard drive back the western digital is 18gb and I also have another western digital hard drive that is 40 gb and they both say the same thing no operating system. also when I try and install windows 98 from the cd it says "windows 98 has detected that drive c does not contain a valid fat or fat32 partition. Both the western digital hard drives are saying the same thing. I just don't know what to do. I tried putting the wd diagnostic tools to a floppy and it wouldn't fit so I tried putting them on a cd and no luck their either.

**Murray S.** · #8 January 19th, 2006, 08:26 PM

Sounds like the WD drive has bit the dust.. you proved the IDE cable and mobo were okay when the Seagate was recognized..

You could try using the Seagate as the "master" and jumpering the WD as a "slave" and getting whatever docs, etc off the WD that way..

Murray

afriend4evr · #9 January 19th, 2006, 08:55 PM

but how could both western digital drives both say the same thing they both can't be bad........how would I do the master slave thing with the two drives wouldn't the wd one still not work?or what do you think about the virus thing is there a way I can scan the wd one with the seagate one still on there? also when I put the 18gb one which is the wd200 cavier in there it recognized on the startup screen that the drive was there and the jumper was on CS. also the seagate drive when I have it on there there is no jumper on it.

**Murray S.** · #10 January 19th, 2006, 10:06 PM

Are you connecting the WD's properly to the IDE cable??

Put either WD drive back in the system (make sure the IDE cable is connected properly..

Now, boot the system using a good boot floppy.. When you get to the a:> prompt, type in "cd c:" (no quotes) and press <enter>..

If you get an error message, try "cd c:\" (again, no quotes)..

Does it change to a c:> prompt or do you get an error message??

Murray

afriend4evr · #11 January 19th, 2006, 10:12 PM

Yes I am connecting the ide cable right. when I put in the startup floppy it goes to a c prompt but when I do dir /w/p at the c prompt the only thing on there is the virtual ram drive created by the startup floppy. I have run scandisk on the c drive and it shows no errors. Then if I put in the windows cd and try to install windows by typing setup I get all those other messages that I have mentioned previously in my posts.

**Murray S.** · #12 January 19th, 2006, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afriend4evr

Then if I put in the windows cd and try to install windows by typing setup I get all those other messages that I have mentioned previously in my posts.

You ARE changing the drive prompt to your cd-rom drive BEFORE typing in setup right??

Also, when you are booting with the boot floppy, you are choosing the "Start WITH cd-rom support" option right??

Murray

afriend4evr · #13 January 19th, 2006, 10:45 PM

yes I am changing to the cdrom drive before typing setup......yes I am choosing start with cdrom support.

**Murray S.** · #14 January 19th, 2006, 10:57 PM

Good.. I had to make sure..

Boot with boot floppy.. Once at a:> prompt, type in "format c:" (no quotes)..

Don't go any further than that.. just tell me what it says..

One more thing.. was the drive originally formatted through Win98 or was another formatting tool used (WD drive overlay program) ??

Murray

Idnew · #15 January 19th, 2006, 11:24 PM

Quote:

the drive may need to be partitioned to create a partition on the drive, run fdisk from ms-dos command prompt.

Did you fdisk and create your partition before you formatted?