We recently bought an old computer for our daughter. SMD Personal computer 486 When we got it, it had a lot of useless junk in it. We reformatted the drive and reinstalled 3.1 from the disks at the prompt. It shut down half way through the reinstall. Now all I can get is Non System Disk or Disk Error Replace and strike any key when ready. I tried the 31 boot disk. I tried to download a DOS disk set and boot disk, I'm not having any luck. Any suggestins, short of beating it with a hammer?

You need to install DOS on the hard drive (not just running from a boot disk). Then once DOS is installed on the hard drive, you can install Win 3.1

I just reformatted a computer and had the same problem, this is what I did. First you need to get a boot disk, so if you don't have one now, go find another windows 3.1 computer and make one. Then when you boot up your computer put the disk in, and you should get to this...
A:/
now, take out the boot disk, and put in the first dos install disk. If you don't have dos disks, go ahead and install windows. When windows is installed, your computer should boot up to this...
c:/
if not, just always use the boot disk and when you get to a:/, type win. That should always get you to windows.