Hi, When booting up my notebook, I get an error "Operating system not found". I am therefore trying to re-install Win98 but fdisk doesnt work - says "Error reading fixed disk". Having read other messages on this site, I have found the solution is to fdisk /mbr to overwrite the MBR and start afresh. This does not work. My BIOS (Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0) does not have a feature to disable virus protection. Another error I get is "Hard disk boot sector protection: ON". Any ideas on how to get around this, so that I can install an operating system (or even recover my existing OS ? I would appreciate any help anyone can offer. Thanks.

You do always not need to re-partition your drive to install the same OS again. Have you tried reformatting the drive, or run the 98 setup with a boot disk? Have you tried booting directly to the Win98 CD? You could also try "failsafe" settings in the bios if your bios supports this option. Post back with any progress. Good Luck.

Look again, if there is an antivirus in the BIOS, there will be a place to disable it.

Thanks for the prompt response Chris & Al. I've tried booting from Win98 startup/bootdisk - but then i have a RAMDrive as c:. Regarding the anti-virus for the bios - there is no such option. this is my latest attempt: 1. Boot up using Win98 startup disk - Says Win98 has detected that Drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition - 3 possible causes: i) Drive needs partioning - use FDISK ii) Something about third-party partitioning software (which does not apply in this case) iii) Some viruses cause your C drive to not register - check for virus. I have checked for a virus - ALL CLEAR 2. using fdisk (without any switches) - enable large HD support = YES --> "Error reading fixed disk." 3. using fdisk /mbr --> "The master boot code has NOT been updated" Nothing i do works. I think the problem is with the MBR, but how can i recreate the MBR without using fdisk /mbr ? I've also tried various bootup sequences ie. floppy/HD/CD HD/floppy/CD CD/HD/floppy CD?floppy/HD but still no change as it cant write to the MBR. Any other ideas?

You may need to run a hard drive utility to check the drive. Find the manufacturers website and see if you can download from their site. It sounds like you may have a problem with your HD, and it may not be limited to the MBR. This could be in the form of corrupted data, boot sector virus,or physical media problems. If you need help finding these utilities, let us know more about your HD.

Chris: I have a HP Omnibook XE2 notebook, with a Hitachi DK23BA-10 (10GB) hard disk. I've tried the Hitachi website for support but there are no diagnostic/drive utils. Also tried the manufacturers recovery disk but as the HD cannot be accessed it cant do anything. The BIOS can detect the HD (it shows up as normal in the boot sequence and BIOS settings) as fixed disk 0. Could you please suggest any alternative solutions (my last resort may be to replace the HD) and if possible, some other compatible drive diagnostic tools that I could try. I am no longer interested in recovering any of the data on the HD, but am content to simply delete everything and start again. Additional info: when I run the HP recovery CD to recover the operating system, the error I get is "Error encountered while creating Save to Disk partition". Thanks.

If you boot from a bootdisk can you switch to the C: drive? If so the drive is probably writeable, but the operating system has been corrupted. You may be able to just reload over the existing Windows and get back up. I would check bootdisk.com to get a bootdisk with some utilities on it and try running Scandisk on C:. It may be able to recover the FAT.