hello, i plead the utmost ignorance in terms of computers. I am a poor uni student who has somehow f***ed his computer and any help would be greatly appreciated. im running win98se on two 1 gig hard drives Firstly, a virus by the name of NewDotNet got onto my comp via the internet, which caused my comp not to connect to the internet anymore and also caused my antivirus softare to stop working. i decided i wanted to format my entire hard drive. however i did not know how to do this properly and started deleting things from my c: folder in windows. starting the computer it came up with a message CMOS settings wrong (something like that) press F1 to run setup. so i did that and changed my boot settings around and that seemed to work. however starting the comp againi got a message saying NTLDR missing. i changed my hard drives around manually unplugging/replugging wires in the computer. but that didnt work so i changed it back the way it was. but now when i start the comp it says Disk 1/0 error (next line) Replace the disk and then press any key So... this is where im at. this is my first time posting on a tech support site. im sorry if my message is too long. if any body can help that would be awesome said578

To format a drive you only need to boot up with a bootdisk and at the dos prompt type in format c: or format c:, depending on which drive you want formatted, and then hit enter. If you don't have one, you should be able to download a bootdisk file at www.bootdisk.com. Run that file and it will create a bootdisk. Make sure you have the 98 installation cd and the product key with which to install it.

AND if you have a win98SE upgrade disk, you will need proof of ownership of a prior version, like a win95CD or win3 floppies.

hello DAVEINCAPS and ham30, thankyou very much for you reply to my post. i probably will attempt to format my c: drive however i would just like to clarify something. when i boot up my comp without the win98se startup disk in drive a: a prompt comes up which states: - Loading Boot Record from Floppy.. Loading Boot Record from IDE-0.. OK NTLDR missing Press any key to restart (and when i press any key the same prompts come up again) however when i boot with the win98se startup disk a prompt comes up which states: - Loading Boot Record from Floppy..OK Disk 1/0 error Replace the disk, and then press any key. (Note this is with the original win98se startup disk that ive got). i have just downloaded another one from bootdisk.com another thing which may make you laugh (remember i dont know much about computers)is: - what is the point of the startup disk? when you boot with the startup disk and it takes you to DOS, what are you supposed to do then? it just comes up with: - a: i'm not sure what it wants me to do. anyways i am really grateful for your help and for any further posts i thankyou in advance. said578

98 doesn't need ntldr. I believe NT-type systems use it in place of the typical system files used on FAT partitions. Anyway I think if you boot up with a bootdisk and type fdisk/mbr and enter at the prompt that should get rid of it. The normal message when attempting to boot from an empty hard drive would be 'missing operating system' or 'disk I/O error'. The 'Loading boot record from. . . ' means the bios is going to those drives to see if they contain a disk. In the first case the floppy drive has no disk so it goes on to the hard drive. The hard drive always has a disk so the polling process stops there and attempts to boot from it. It doesn't find the necessary system files and, because it's expecting to find an ntldr file, it gives an error message. In the second case it's finding the disk in the floppy drive but can't boot from it. That can be because the drive is bad, misidentified in cmos, floppy controllers aren't enabled or the drive cabling is bad or loose. But usually it means the disk is bad or it's not a bootdisk. So go with that assumption first and get a new bootdisk. It does help to have some knowledge of dos since the bootdisk just leaves you at the a:\> prompt. The main commands are fdisk, which sets the partitions on the drive and format which formats the drive so it can be used. Usually when a person want to do a clean installation or just wipe the disk they only need to run the format command.