Start Up Problem

[degradation]

Hi, I am new to the forum and I need some help ASAP. I have an Emachines computer with windows 98, works fine and everything. Well, my friend recently gave me a compaq computer with no hard drive in it. So, I wanted to try and see if the hard drive from my Emachines computer would work on the Compaq. Anyway, I took out the hard drive (ive done this many times before with no problems), and put in on the Compaq, i turns out that it didn't work out. So i put the hard drive back into the original computer (the Emachines) exactly the way it was, and for some reason it wont boot up properly. It stays on a black screen with lots of information and at the very bottom it says:

Cd-Rom ...something.....something...... NOT FOUND
Floppy.....something......something.......NOT FOUND
HDD........something..... somthing.........OK

It is very important that I try and fix this ASAP, any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[gstone4911]

Hi degradation

Might give this a try ,boot the computer
with a 98boot disk,
At the A:>\ prompt type
fdisk /mbr
press Enter.
This will rewrite the master boot record.

Remove the boot disk and restart.

[degradation]

Thanks. I have a question about that procedure, Will it effect any of the data on the hard drive? I have Very important data on my computer, banking accounts etc... I dont want to lose any important data.

[gstone4911]

Shouldn't affect any data. A hard drive saves a copy
of the Master Boot Record (MBR) in-case the original becomes corrupt.
fdisk /mbr overwrites the MBR with the copy.

[degradation]

Thanks, I will give it a try.