Operating System Not Found

[kayb531]

When rebooting after a lock-up my son mistakenly left a
disk in the CD drive. The system ramped the RAM,
initialized the keyboard, etc., he got a "Operating System
Not Found" message and then nothing.

He tried removing the disk and rebooting but no change.

Help!

[Ron Badour]

Identify the brand of hard drive, go to the drive maker's web site and
download their diagnostic software. It runs from a floppy disk and will
tell you the health of your hard drive. If the drive has failed, you will
have to replace it. If it is OK, then you will probably have to reinstall
W98.

--
Regards

Ron Badour, MS MVP for W98
Tips: http://home.satx.rr.com/badour
Knowledge Base Info:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo

"kayb531" > wrote in message
...
> When rebooting after a lock-up my son mistakenly left a
> disk in the CD drive. The system ramped the RAM,
> initialized the keyboard, etc., he got a "Operating System
> Not Found" message and then nothing.
>
> He tried removing the disk and rebooting but no change.
>
> Help!

[Buffalo]

Curious,
Check the ribbon cable connections to the HDD and motherboard.
Check the power cable to the HDD.
Can you get into the BIOS by holding down the Del key?
Make sure there is not a floppy disk inserted and if there is, remove it and
try rebooting again.
Can you get to the Start-up menu by pressing F8 or by
Will a Win98 boot disk work to get you to the A:\ prompt.
If so, type C: and press Enter.
If you are lucky so far, type Scanreg /restore and press Enter.
Pick out the date of the Registry for that day or maybe the next newest one.
Follow on screen directions.

"kayb531" > wrote in message
...
> When rebooting after a lock-up my son mistakenly left a
> disk in the CD drive. The system ramped the RAM,
> initialized the keyboard, etc., he got a "Operating System
> Not Found" message and then nothing.
>
> He tried removing the disk and rebooting but no change.
>
> Help!

[CJT]

kayb531 wrote:

> When rebooting after a lock-up my son mistakenly left a
> disk in the CD drive. The system ramped the RAM,
> initialized the keyboard, etc., he got a "Operating System
> Not Found" message and then nothing.
>
> He tried removing the disk and rebooting but no change.
>
> Help!

It could be lots of things.

Hardware failure -- disk drive or controller, cable come loose, etc.

Software failure -- critical system file(s) deleted from drive

Firmware failure -- bios lost configuration

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .