Help, I have a lap top that I keep a lot of data and photos on. Whilst life will go on if lost it would be a real pain. Recently when I switched on the lap top I received a black screen with the message: "Operating system not found" I've had to revert back to using the old Win 98SE desk top that the kids have been using and needless to say that it isn't a great substitute. I saw an earlier post where Dave2, I believe, gave a solution that used the cab files to restore or repair the registry. This may be the way to go, however I need to know if there is any way to save the photos before restorig or repairing or will they be saved on the HDD. I'm not sure if this makes much sense. Hopefully someone can help. Denise.

You can't run any of those commands until the Operating System loads. You need to enter the CMOS/BIOS setup screen and ensure that your hard drive is listed correctly there. If it is, you may be able to restore the system files with an ME bootdisk. If the HDD is not listed in CMOS, you may have a bad hard drive - which would complicate the recovery of any files. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

jboy, Thanks for the comments. I'm not familiar with working with the CMOS/BIOS, could someone explain how this is done in Windows ME. Thanks Denise.

Ok - the CMOS or BIOS is independent of the Operating System - it's there whether or not Windows is installed at all. This is where the hardware settings for your machine are stored. To access the setup, usually you'd hit the 'del' key after the memory is counted when the machine first starts, but it might be different on your computer. Should see instructions for setup onscreen when the computer starts. Since the Operating System can't be found or loaded, no Windows commands can work. First, you need to see if your hard drive is recognized in the BIOS - if it's not, then not much more can be done short of pulling the drive to try recovery in another machine. If it is recognized, you might want to try starting with a WinME bootdisk and see if you can restore the bootfiles by entering sys c: We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile