Full Version: Lost My Os
A friend of mine gave me his old computer. When I brought it home and turnded it on it worked fine but, the floppy drive didn't work. I had a spare drive from one of my old computers so I swapped them out. Now, for some reason the computer won't boot. I tried a boot disk and it tells me that no fixed disk is present. I didn't change anything on the hard drive or the boot options (that I know of). WHAT HAPPENED TO MY OPERATING SYSTEM?
When you changed out the floppy, you may have forgot or did not plug the power cords or ide cables back in. If you did not remove them they may have come loose as you were working inside the case.
Look in the BIOS to see if the drive is present. Sometime a bad CMOS battery will effect the motherboard remembering the setings.
Look in the BIOS to see if the drive is present. Sometime a bad CMOS battery will effect the motherboard remembering the setings.
All cables are connected and the drive is present in the BIOS. When I try to boot from the boot disk it tells me that Windows 98 has detected that ther are no valid FAT or FAT32 partitions on drive C. Will I have to reinstall the OS and if so how do I do that if FDISK will not even identify the drive.
Does the floppy work now? Can you boot from a Windows 98 Startup disk? Is that where you are getting the FDISK from?
Yes, the floppy works now. 98 boot disk is where I am getting FDISK from. I don't understand what happened. Very frustrating! 
If the drive is recognised in the BIOS then Fdisk should see it - I cannot see how they could be otherwise. In the BIOS re-detect the hard drive - change the setting to 'auto' or see if there is a hard-drive auto-detect section and run that.
QUOTE(SGTKast @ Dec 4 2005, 02:01 AM) 
All cables are connected and the drive is present in the BIOS. When I try to boot from the boot disk it tells me that Windows 98 has detected that ther are no valid FAT or FAT32 partitions on drive C. Will I have to reinstall the OS and if so how do I do that if FDISK will not even identify the drive.
Here you state that it does not detect a partition on C drive, in the first POST you stated it cannot detect a hard drive.
I am leaning towards a hard drive failure. Boot your computer , with the boot disk, to "Minimum" and type in C:\fdisk. What if any partitions are listed.
Thanks all but I found the problem. The hard drive is no good. must have got zapped when I changed the floppy. Changed HD and all is fine. Thank You! 
No problem. Sometimes it just works like that. Glad you figured it out.
QUOTE(SGTKast @ Dec 4 2005, 12:51 AM)
A friend of mine gave me his old computer. When I brought it home and turnded it on it worked fine but, the floppy drive didn't work. I had a spare drive from one of my old computers so I swapped them out. Now, for some reason the computer won't boot. I tried a boot disk and it tells me that no fixed disk is present. I didn't change anything on the hard drive or the boot options (that I know of). WHAT HAPPENED TO MY OPERATING SYSTEM?
check the cables if that dont work try re-installing the OS
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