i'm trying to fix my mom's computer. she has an older compaq presario 7360, windows 98. it says "Operating system not found on any devices. Press any key to try again."

i tried to start it up in safe mode but the safe mode screen never appears, and i still get the same message.

she also has the quickrestore disc that originally came with the computer but i think she is missing one of them because she only has disc #1, and she doesn't remember how many disc(s) there were. when i put the disc in and reboot the computer, the quickrestore screen comes up with the blue background and red box that says quickrestore, but the screen doesn't do anything. ive waited and waited but the screen stays the same. when i figured that maybe i need to press something, enter for example, the red box just continues to move up with each time i press enter until it completely disappears from the screen.

can anybody help me with getting rid of the "Operating system not found on any devices. Press any key to try again." problem? i'm not much of a computer whiz by the way.

Judging by the age of the computer and if you've never replaced anything, it's possible that the hard drive died. Does the hard drive light show any activity when you turn it on? The data cable to the drive could have also worked loose

Operating system not found error may come for many reasons. Normally, it means that you have no operating system on your hard disk. This message appears when you install a fresh hard disk without anything on it and turn your computer on. It may also mean that your computer is not detecting our hard disk.

Have a look at the device listed in the BIOS message that appears when computer starts.

You can try checking the IDE ribbon cable which connects the hard disk to motherboard. Remove it and put it back again. Also check the power cable conneced to hard disk. Look for hard disk LED if it glows when computer starts.

Other possiblities are hard disk's master boot record may have damaged, it has bad sectors or it has crashed. You can check all this if you have a Windows boot floppy. Boot your computer through a Windows boot floppy and run type "scandisk/all".

Hope it works out for you.

Your hard drive failed or the cable needs to be replaced I fix computers a lot for my school just to help them out because of issues with there network anyway is the hard drive making a clicking noise or any strange noises like a clicking...

Do the following things

1.Check the bios to make sure it is detecting it.
2.Check all cables

or if the hard drive died.

It sounds like it did you need to replace it with an EIDE hard drive and make sure you have all the disks for this computer ready.

I am a new user on bleeping computer and an advanced user at working with computers heck I got two monitors going on my computer right now.. Also I think your hard drive could have failed if you need me to I will give you my email address.

HARD DRIVES ONLY LAST FOR AT LEAST 5 YEARS DEPENDING ON THE TYPE OF WORK AREA THERE IN.

I STILL DUAL BOOT WITH THESE OLDER OPERATING SYSTEMS SO IF ANYONE I MEAN ANYONE HAS A PROBLEM WITH 95,98,ME PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ASK...

I grew up using 95,98,Me

STILL GOT A THE CD-ROM'S FOR THESE OLDER OPERATING SYSTEMS

I am posting this using Window Me I was playing an older game earlier so if you have a question make a post

According to your post there, my hard drive will die in exactly 3 weeks. LOL

BTW garmanma, how can you make animations like the one you use for your avatar, which format is that?

Peace.

It's an animated .gif
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