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Hi guys, this one is driving me crazy. I tried to install both DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.22 on my 486 (not simultaneously). Al goes well untill the instruction: "Remove all floppies... restart". I press enter and everytime I receive the following message: "OPERATING SYSTEM MISSING" How is that possible, I mean I have just installed it and was never stopped!!! Please!!
Thanx. You know I was wondering where all those values were coming from. Are they automatically arrived at or what.
What do you suggest I do to rectify this problem. Does it also mean I have to re-install again?
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Normaly a 486-BIOS can't find the harddrive settings by himself.
You have to know wich harddrive you have, and how many heads, cilinders and sectors it has.
These are the only things you have to put into the bios
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Note that "missing operating system" is not a BIOS error...which means that the BIOS is definately finding the first sector on the drive and is loading it into memory and executing it.
Try getting aefdisk:
http://www.aefdisk.comBoot from a bootdisk with it on it ---- if you don't even have a bootdisk, grab techw0rm from http://dos.li5.org -- as I've put 'aefdisk' on it already.
Once booted, at the A:\> prompt, type:
aefdisk /showYou should see your list of partitions, and one should have two asterix beside it...if it doesn't, then that's your problem, just type:
aefdisk /activate:1
pop the disk out, reboot.
- W0rm
- http://dos.li5.org
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That is not a SCSI drive by any chance?
Usually missing operating system means there are no command.com or hidden boot files on the drive, but some SCSI controllers give that message when the controller is bad. An IDE controller usually gives a "hard drive failure" error message in that situation.
Actually your problem does not make complete sense as a controller failure since you go through a complete install. Because you cannot then boot to the hard drive, a bad place on the hard drive or some other source of boot file corruption is a possibility. Try to SYS C: only. Will the computer boot to C: now? If it will and the version you used to SYS C: is the one you will use SYS C: again after you finish installing. If it will not boot, start looking for a surface problem on the hard drive with Scandisk and other software.
If none of this works, look on the drive for the drive parameters (ide drives) and check that the correct ones are listed in the BIOS.
There are software utilities that will find these for you, but you can usually find Cylinders, Heads and Sectors listed on the drive somewhere.
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Actually rhere are BIOSes that give misleading error messages:
- on Acer laptop I had once a CD-ROM fault which made the BIOS not to find the HD.
After thinking a while, it did show the window with BIOS setting (with Drive0=none) followed by the message: System not found.
- once a friend asked me for advice: his Toshiba laptop wasn't starting properly, with a error message of the form "file xxxx.xxx not found". When I tried to insert my diagnostic disk I found that there was one already in (obviously, with no system on it).
I wonder sometime who is wording the error messages.
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Speaking of error messages, I have a cd recorder and software that says "no supported Cd recorder present" when it means "not enough conventional memory".
I want to apologise to WOrm if he is sure it is not a BIOS problem. I did not read his post before I posted. And I was thinking that parameters for the hard drive a number or so off might cause something like that.
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Thanx for the advice but the plot is thickening. I have now discovered that, as Fred has suggested, that the boot-up files are missing. When I put the boot-up stiffie in place I can actually access my programs. The same thing happens when I shut down, I get the message: "Install COMMAND.COM in order to proceed:, or something to that effect.
Now, I installed(well I want to belief I did)Command.Com on C:\DOS and tried to restart, but nothing happened. I then copied the contents of my boot-up file to C:\DOS and again, nothing. Maybe I should just FDISK and make a clean installation! Could my problem have anything to do with the fact that I downloaded DOS 6.22 from the Internet? Look forward to your comments and advice.
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I had a similiar problem. My solution was to Fdisk the partition and create it as Primary Dos. Second, I set it as active. Then I copied the system files using a high-level format (format/s). Let me know if this helps.
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Hi Mike
Yes it solved my problem. Thanx for the advice. I would still love to know what else I could have done. I still belief that the easier option would have been to install maybe the 3 root files.
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Anytime I put on my Laptop,I receive the message "operating not found".I have to reboot it several times before it sees the operating system.Could please advice me on what to do, for it is driving me crazy.
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