I still cant believe how unhelpfull you were Kevin The tech dude I just hope your site that offers help doesnt say "Take it to a computer technician" all the time like you said here. That is bs man this guy needs help now ffs!

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I have to agree with Zorba. Not that anyone is an idiot, of course. There are just those who know a little and those who know a little more. I recently built my own computer and learned this lesson and what Zorba outlined is one solution that I had to use on my own. Thanks Zorba for your tidbits of info! Just wanted to let you know that some of us do appreciate techguys and/or just savvie users when they offer advice! :)

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Thanks Kim good to see a bit of support :)

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It is possible that sys.com could fix the problem and save the data. Fdisk can give info about the MBR as in this exerpt: RESOLUTION Each of the error messages listed above may indicate problems ranging from improper hardware configuration to damaged hard disk partition information. The following steps can be used to help resolve the problem. However, if these steps do not resolve the problem, please contact your hardware manufacturer or have the drive serviced by a qualified service professional. 1. Start the computer using the Windows 95 emergency boot disk (EBD) or using a bootable MS-DOS disk that contains Fdisk.exe, Format.com, Sys.com, and Scandisk.exe (MS-DOS versions 6.2x only). If your computer does not start from drive A, or if you receive an error message similar to one listed above when you start from drive A, please contact the computer's manufacturer. 2. Use Fdisk.exe to view the partitions on the hard disk by performing the following steps: a. Run Fdisk.exe from the EBD or bootable MS-DOS disk. NOTE: If the hard disk was not partitioned using Fdisk.exe, use the appropriate third-party partitioning software to view the hard disk partition(s). For instructions on using the third-party partitioning software, please consult the software's documentation. b. Select option 4 (Display partition information). c. If the partitions are listed, make sure that the bootable partition is defined as active (look for an uppercase A in the Status column.) d. If there are no partitions listed, use Fdisk.exe to establish new partitions and then use Format.com to format the partition you want to boot from. WARNING: When you use Fdisk.exe or Format.com to create new partitions or format the drive, you lose any data on that drive or partition. e. If all the partitions appear in Fdisk.exe, and one is defined as active, proceed to the next step. 3. Run the SYS command on the hard disk from the EBD or bootable MS-DOS disk. For example, type the following command: a:\sys c: If you receive the message "System Transferred," remove the disk from drive A and restart the computer. If you receive the same error message after you restart your computer, your hard disk may be configured improperly or damaged

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Howdy, Well 10+yrs of experince as a computer tech means nothing I quess. Telling someone to Format there hard drive without the facts is wrong and that person is a idiot. Mr. Zorba says format the hard drive, that will fix the problem. Maybe my new responce to everyones problems will be, uh jsut format you're hard drive. Telling someone to format is a answer of, I don't know what the problem is but this will fix it. Its Compaq's favorite thing to do when people call there tech support. Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude.

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I only told him to do this because he was obviously prepared to format his drive.

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Having a computer at home is either, 1. a dangerous thing or, 2. a learning experience. Whichever one chooses to make of that little plastic box, is eventually going to turn into a learning experience! First of all, if no backups were ever made of the hard drive to begin with, then that was the first mistake; and regardless of what solution chosen, loss of data could have been taken care of to begin with. For myself, I don't keep anything of vast importance to galactic survivial on my computer, so if I have to screw around with FDISK, then what the heck? kwim? And, as a kicker to this discussion, I have a 6.4 G HD and a 1.2 G HD. When I moved them both into my new computer, the 1.2 (which only has OS on it) showed up beautifully. However, the 6.4, which was partitioned didn't - I tried everything I could find on how to get it to appear without screwing with my games ;) that I had saved at extremely critical points of play - haha! Anyways, I kept screwing with FDISK and finally decided to just reformat the thing and when I deleted the partitions and it finally recognized it as one...I was very shocked to find that the information was not missing! (yes, the theme music from Twilight Zone is playing!) hehe...Anyways, figure that one out dudes! And, no, I didn't use Partition Magic or anything like it...

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I reread what I had typed and noticed that I said I reformatted - obviously, I was having an out of body experience. No I didn't reformat at that point - I meant to write that I deleted the partitions, one at a time, and when WIN98 saw the HD it had the information from Partition 1 still on the sucker...Sorry for that booboo -- But you know what? We all make mistakes!!!! Oh, yeah, and, btw I have 20 years of computing experience behind me...the previous 10 as a tech, but with Macs (ugh!) I only recently got involved in PCs - which I have to admit I like a lot better...

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The first thing to check which everyone forgot to mention is {THE CMOS} ensure the hard drive setting are still there and were not lost! You will get the error NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND IF THE INCORRECT SETTING ARE THERE. I hope you wrote the settings down when you setup your system. Different CMOS setting will work with the drive, but they may not be the original settings the drive was setup with. If they are then the next step would be to boot with a floppy disk and FDISK (option 4, Display partition information). This will tell you if a partition still exsists. If the partition doesn't exsist try to create a primary partition. If that works then reboot and format using a boot disk with format using the /s switch to copy the system files over.

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