Operating System Not Found

Hi,

My sister is having problems with her computer. The following is how she
described them to me. Perhaps someone has an explanation for this problem.

She had problems with it last month and took it into a computer shop to get
repaired. (I believe she got struck with a virus.) Anyway, they fixed
things and installed McAfee on her machine. She was using it at home with
no problem. Then she downloaded an update to McAfee. During the install,
she got a fatal exception error (Windows 98SE, if you were wondering about
the OS). When she went to restart the computer, it gave her a message like,
"Operating system not found on hard drive."

Does anyone have a clue on what could have caused this?

 

If a problem is less than 5 days old in win98 then restart the system
pressing the F8 key and choose Command prompt only Dos or restart in
Msdos mode and type scanreg/restore and try an older reg(cab
file)backup,however you may have to re-install some programs and user
changes if they were installed after this date.

HTH

 

McAfee.

 

LOL :O

 

That won't work if the operating system can't be found!

 

Boot from your startup floppy and at the DOS prompt type:

sys c:

Then reboot, removing the floppy.

 

it sounds like one of the system files on drive 'c' got clobbered.
hopfully she has a emergency boot disk still.
have her boot off the diskette.
then at the dos prompt type;

a\: sys c:
what this will do is transfer the system files to drive C
if this doesnt work type : sys /?
and this will give you all the options with the sys command.
you MUST be on drive 'a' (floppy drive) and not the hard drive 'c' for this
to work.
hope this helps you some.

Daniel.

 

it sounds like one of the system files on drive 'c' got clobbered.
hopfully she has a emergency boot disk still.
have her boot off the diskette.
then at the dos prompt type;

a\: sys c:
what this will do is transfer the system files to drive C
if this doesnt work type : sys /?
and this will give you all the options with the sys command.
you MUST be on drive 'a' (floppy drive) and not the hard drive 'c' for this
to work.
hope this helps you some.

Daniel.

 

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 17:18:35 -0700, Danny wrote:

[everything was below the sig delimiter]

While I appreciate your agreement on my comment it would be better if you
only posted once in reply and that you learn to put quoted and new text
*above* the sigdash. Else, it all gets clipped and the message is difficult
to reply to properly.

 

There are several possible causes, and we need to determine which of
these is the one that actually happened.

Applying the wrong fix can make the problem even worse, and seriously
reduce the chances of actually recovering the data on the hard drive.

First thing to do is to boot the computer with a Windows Startup Disk.
At the A:\> enter the following command:

DIR C:\ /S

What should happen is that the screen should scroll madly for perhaps
several minutes and then stop with a display showing the final totals
for the files and folders on the hard drive. What it shows is not
important. The fact that it does this without error is. So if it
completes this step then proceed to the next step. But if there is
any error message or other hiccup stop at this point and get expert
help. Or post the error message and other information back here.

The next step is to enter the following command:

SCANDISK C:

Do not repeat do not let Scandisk fix any errors. If any errors are
reported stop at that point. Again, get a repair techician to look at
the machine or post the scandisk problem information back here.


If scandisk completes okay then it is safe to assume that the cause is
in fact damaged or deleted system boot files on the hard drive and
using the SYS C: command from a boot disk for the same version of
Windows should remedy the problem.


Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

first, be sure the harddrive is being properly recognized by the bios
....if so, boot up with a win98 bootdisk
then issue the command sys C:

remove the floppy then reboot

if that does not work
post back with the exact error message

 

Have it your way.

Just be prepared to c.y.a. when somebody does wipe out their hard
drive contents.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

Huh? Where was there any suggestion, or possibility, of the
BIOS settings being changed? I'm willing to listen.

You seem to be throwing this out to an hypothetical situation.
There is no "somebody", other than the OP, and this particular
issue.

 

Actually, I dump Mcafee programs a long time ago.. I found out they
thought they owned my computer and uninstalling any or their programs
requires a very good knowledge of the registry and search functions.
I had the same problem as you had and had to do a complete reinstall
of Windows. Since then I run from most Mcafee products except Spam
Killer which I think is a major, major spam fighting program.