Hi Michael, thx for your answer, but i have indeed reinstalled both DOS and Windows 3.1 several times, but i still get the same message...... i have a computer at home, i believe its a 486SLC Ambra Slimline Computer, for the past 2 years its been sitting in my basement. The problem is that everytime i try to enter Windows 3.1 from DOS of course, by typing WIN at the prompt (which was what i did when it was working) i get the message that i'm "MISSING HIMEM.SYS". Its been doing this for the past 3 years, thats why i just shoved it in a corner and bought a new one a couple of years ago. Also to access the c: drive i need a boot disk, so i made on of those and thats the only way i can get into DOS to access C:\ i'm not sure why i cant boot from the c: drive, when i try i get the message "MISSING OPERATION SYSTEM", so i restart my computer and boot in my boot disk to get into c.

Try running scandisk (C:\DOS) or,(if you have it) Norton disk doctor You might also try installing with another set of DOS disks. If that still does'nt fix it, then try reformatting the HDD

On a old 486 computer, by now the battery is probably dead. Just replace and run the setup program.

I have posted a fuller answer on a duplicate of your posted message

Sometimes i don't read messages very carefully, i am sorry. The reason why you have to keep booting from a floppy disk, is your hard disk is not a system disk! It is not 'bootable'. Would you like your hard drive to be a bootable drive? If you didn't understand, just nod and say yes.............Good If you have personal data on the computer, remove it onto floppies. Make sure you have backups of all programs before proceeding. You will need 8 floppies for windows, unless you have the original installation disks already. The question is now, do you have the installation version of msdos? If you do, reboot the computer with install disk 1 in the drive, and dos will be reinstalled, and make the hard drive bootable I am going to suspect you don't so the process is more difficult. If you have a flopy disk that is bootable you are in luck! You must have all the msdos commands, though. If you have a c:\dos directory, copy all of these files onto floppies, and make two copies, you may need six floppies. Now boot the computer with the bootable floppy. At the command prompt type c:\>format c:/s Big deal! Very big. It will format the hard drive, deleting everything on the computer! I told you to back everything up. The /s bit, makes a boot sector on the hard drive, and transfers the system files onto the hard drive. Don't reboot!, no, no no! You need to have two files on your computer and they haven't been written , yet! Right, you've formatted the hard drive, and its a system disk, it should boot, but you aren't going to yest, because something is missing, actually two things are missing, config.sys, and autoexec.bat, collectively these are called the msdos registry, we need to create a registry, but we won't do that yet! At the command prompt type c:\>md dos now copy all the msdos files you have on floppies, into this directory. Not installation files though. An installation files ha an _ at the end of it. Like scandisk.ex_ Don't copy anything that has and underscore character at the end. I am assuming you don't have the install files, which would have made the whole thing a doddle! To copy the files, put the dos disks in drive A, one at a time, obviously, and type A:\>copy *.* c:\dos until all of the files are in the dos directory. Now switch to the c drive, you've still got work to do! At the command prompt type c:\>path c:\dos c:\>edit config.sys you should get a lovely blue screen, blank, type the following lines into config.sys The commands preced by rem, should only be entered if relevant. If you get any error messages, let me know, but we're not ready to go yet! Don't ype in th eline below or comments that i have made into config.sys. It doesn't matter if you use upper or lower case letters. [Config.sys] Don't type this line in DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.exe DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS device=c:\dos\emm386.exe ram device=c:\dos\ansi.sys device=c:\dos\display.sys con=(ega,,1) DOS=HIGH,umb FILES=30 BUFFERS=40 LASTDRIVE = Z STACKS=9,256 rem country=044,,c:\dos\country.sys #You might not need the top line if you are USA rem Device = C:\CDROM\CDROM.SYS /D:CD001 /V #The above line is only if you have a cdrom drive rem DEVICE=C:\windows\SMARTDRV.exe /DOUBLE_BUFFER #Not until you've put windows back Not press Alt-F-X, and press enter = save the changes. At the command prompt type c:\>edit autoexec.bat As before, add the following lines [Autoexec.bat] echo off cls ver PATH C:\WIN31;C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS mode con codepage prepare=((437);c:\dos\ega.cpi) mode con codepage select=437 PROMPT $p$g SHARE.EXE /l:500 /f:5100 SET TEMP=C:\DOS\temp rem C:\DOS\MSCDEX.exe /D:ARCCD01 /D:CD001 /L:D /M:12 /V rem C:\DOS\MSCDEX.exe /D:MSCD001 /M:8 rem C:\windows\SMARTDRV.exe /L rem keyb uk,, c:\dos\keyboard.sys rem win.com Again, press Alt-F-X, and enter to save the changes. Now type c:\>cd dos c:\>md temp Remove any disk from the floppy drive, and press Alt-Ctrl-Del (The three system keys) One hopes it should boot OK. OK email me at david.peacock@kcl.ac.uk