ahh! What the?!?!

[NeXus18]

Uh, my son took it apart then put it back together again now when I turn it on an error message shows saying "missing operating system" I guess that is a bad thing right? It's only an old 486 packard bell exeutive with a socket 3 motherboard but i like it so can anyone help? http://www.cybertechhelp.com/ubb/confused.gif

[smurfy]

Hi Nexus18, welcome to Cybertech Help.

This could be various things.
I'll start with the obvious:

On bootup (before it starts looking for the operating system) does the BIOS detect your hard drive/s?

Press F1 immediately after the memory test and make sure that it is finding the hard drive and boot sequence is booting from A: then C:

Next step is find / download a W98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com) (it will include CDrom Support), boot up with it in your floppy drive and you will be able to use DOS to find what's on your drives, whether they are even formatted etc.
Once it boots up from the floppy, type
c: {ENTER}
dir {enter}

If it lists a whole bunch of files, your o/s is probably there.
If it comes up with an error like
"invalid media reading drive C:" or similar, your hard drive/partition has been wiped clean.

Come back to us with your results...

------------------
Smurfy
Suggest A Fix (http://www.suggestafix.com) & CyberTech Help (http://www.cybertechhelp.com) moderator.
smurfynz@netscape.net

[NeXus18]

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/ubb/mad.gif yeah but the problem is that I have not got the flashy great sys bios that all the more recent computers have but instead own the old ****e one that wont even let you chance the boot sequence, oh and it wont even let me use that however, I can start up using the packard bell system restorer, then start up autoexec.bat and I can also chancge any of my files using editor, but when I load up autoexec.bat it tells me thart lots of stuff wont work becouse himem is not loaded and that I should check my config.sys file to see if the load=himem line is there but it is and i dont get it!, I have tried chkdsk and it tells me there is a ****load of bad clustors etc. and oh yeah I have the unbelivably ****ty win 3.1!!@*&^%$£?@*!!?!@?***?!!@

ARSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEE!"£$%^&*()_+{}@~:?><

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/ubb/mad.gif http://www.cybertechhelp.com/ubb/mad.gif http://www.cybertechhelp.com/ubb/mad.gif

[steveharrison84]

what does the line look like in config.sys
for himem.sys if its not correct the operating system will not find it,can you post the line..
steve.

[smurfy]

I think the first thing you need to do is boot up with the PB restore disk and at the A:/> prompt type:
sys c: {enter}
It should say "system transferred".

Reboot.


------------------
Smurfy
Suggest A Fix (http://www.suggestafix.com) & CyberTech Help (http://www.cybertechhelp.com) moderator.
smurfynz@netscape.net

[NeXus18]

this is the line in my config.sys file

loadhigh:=himem.sys

ps is there any way to load himem outside the config.sys jobby?