Hi all, I started having issues with the machine couple months ago. I lost the CD drives, ( I have two installed ). This happened after I had downloaded Windows Media Player. ( I did find the thread on that on the forum...just now....sighs ), anyway, I got them back, not sure how. Then they disappeared again. Finally, out of frustration, I did a system restore which I have done before with no problems. I also lost my colors down to only two colors, forget now what it was...

This time, it like did something odd. Desktop would come up but it would not let me do anything, said something about password being invalid...colors still gone. Then I was in process of moving, so I had it unplugged since May and just got back to it today.

I turned it on and it said, operating system not found on a black screen. I thought this may be due to it being without power for so long.

I have the 98SE installation disks. SO I thought about just redoing the system. I lost the boot disk though, so I went to bootdisk.com and burned the ISO with Nero. I don't have a floppy drive on my XP machine, so burned it to a cd for the 98 machine.

I went into Bios ( F10 ). It lists ATAPI at the top of it, but I can't get it to do anything..there is no + or - to bring down any kind of tree etc, so I am ASSUMING that this is already in the correct order to boot from the cd rom?

Under Master, slave etc....it lists ( none ) for them all. I am not sure exactly what this means.

I did go online and found a tutorial for this process of reformatting and doing clean install and tried to follow the directions. The issue is, that no matter what I do, that screen comes up that says Operating system not found.

What exactly am I doing wrong???? When I turn on the machine, it appears that the floppy starts up on it, it makes the noise.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I miss my 98SE...sighs.

Thanks for your time, and no hurries...it's not going anywhere...lol...and it's not like I am without a computer...this has just become a vendetta for me now...and I would like to learn how to reformat, so no better time than the present. :-P

Sincerely, Jen.

Hello, and Welcome to D-A-L.

It sounds like the cmos battery may be dead or dying. The system has probably lost the drive parameters (cylinders, sectors, etc) which enable the system to "interpret" the drive geometry to allow use of it. If it's not "recognized" properly, you'll get the "Operating system not found" error because it can't "see" the boot files.

One way to tell is to boot with a Win98SE Boot Disk* and when you get to the A:\> prompt, type in date. If the date is incorrect it's a good bet the battery is dead.

Once power is applied to the system, and if the drive(s) are set to AUTO, the system should run. (The time and date will be wrong but it should run as long as power is supplied to the machine.) However, if the IDE AUTO DETECTION utility in the bios has been used, (this is different than the drives being set to AUTO), it "stamps" the drive parameters to the drive(s), which will be lost once the cmos looses power.

The IDE AUTO DETECTION utility will also give you up to three parameters to choose from. The parameters which have a Y are the ones the system will use best. If the drive has been set up with one of the others though, you can still get the "Operating system not found" error until you pick the appropriate one. (ie; possibly if the drive was set up in another system.)

"Under Master, slave etc....it lists ( none ) for them all."
Go back into the bios and arrow over to the NONE and see if you can set/toggle this to AUTO for all four drives. Save the changes and reboot without turning off the machine. (Ctrl/Alt/Del)

Post back with your results or any further questions/information.



*The above bootdisk image file is a self extracting file and has to be executed (run) from a running Windows(9x) machine in order to create the actual startup diskette on one of your floppy disks. (This image file produces the same bootdisk which 98SE creates.) This downloaded image file will format the floppy disk to ensure its integrity, write the files to the disk, then verify the file write, so it'll take a minute or three to create the bootdisk.

Ensure the floppy drive is set as the first boot device in the bios. http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/23.html

NOTE: When you boot a machine with this boot floppy, it creates a RAMDRIVE in system memory to contain DOS system tools/drivers. Thus it will move your "normal" CDROM device/drive letter "up" one level. (If your CDROM is normally E: it will be F: when booting with this bootdisk.)

The path to the found CDROM will be set with the bootfiles, so entering A:\>f:\setup is the same as entering A:\>setup at the A:\> prompt. There is no need to include the cdrom drive letter. The CDROM device letter will be assigned near the end of the floppy boot process, right after MSCDEX is loaded.

Ah....battery..hadn't thought of that. Geeee...I will give that a shot.

Can I burn the boot disk files to a cd instead of a floppy and run it from the cd? My XP machine doesn't have a floppy drive ( argh ). It has a burner on it for cd/dvd though. Do I follow the instructions the same then like I would if it were floppy drive?

I'll try this tomorrow and see how it does, the date check. :-) I'll let u know how it goes.

Thank you sooo much for responding. Like I said..no hurries or worries..lol...never a loss when I can learn something new ;-)

Jen.

Sorry to be away for so long. I've had a few system woes of my own.

You'd need a bootdisk (to use as an "image" to make a bootable CD), UNLESS you download a bootable CD ISO image to use. I believe bootdisk.com has these. I know you can get one here;

http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.ph...r&filecatid=88

You can also enter the bios and check the system time there. It should be on the MAIN or GENERAL screen along with the date, floppy, IDE device listings etc.