Fell asleep while I was having a online trojan scan done, woke up to a blue screen and I was dense enough to hit enter a couple of times, finally turned it off w/ power button. Next day I go to boot - nothing but it boots into DOS (black screen, not blue) with a message that says " Operating System Not found" and that's it. I do get the splash screen for a second 1st then it gives me the above. Have tried to boot every way I know with the boot disk and it will not go into SAFE mode. Tried to get to command prompt to do a scanreg/restore - wouldn't do it. Can get to C:/ prompt and that's it. Tried to pull up the last registry (5 days) - nothing. Run regscan or scandisk/all and it finishes either in less than a second which is way off base. I've worked every solution I can think of that wouldn't effect any files if in fact there are still any there. I did manage to get to one point where it told me "No Boot partition " or something similar. There is/was > 1k MP3's + other data on there I'd really, really like to recover/burn. I can pull up a list using DIR but to be honest I'm not sure if the boot disk put those files on there or if it's the stuff that was there already. It pulls up 12 different directories but I'm not sure what data is in them. Researched and as far as I could figure these are my options unless one of you (as i bow saying "I'm not worthy") Great Super-techs could kindly share some of your forbidden and hard-to-find wisdom with me. My way or your way -Either way, I need your advise please. So if I may.. Are there any fdisk (like fdisk/mbr), register, restore commands I might try that won't overwrite my other files ? Should I try to install Windows into a new folder possibly or write it over the old one maybe ? Extract something from .CAB files perhaps that would work ? Are there any freebie file recovery downloads I could put on a flop that might repair Me or else make it to where I could access and burn those files to a cd ? I do have another comp but it has Lindows on it and I don't know how it'll react if I tie that hard drive to the my Linux one and try to get the files transfered. Is there something I can do with Partition Majic ? I have it but haven't ever used it. Most things I read say that if I jack with the partition any that there's a good chance it'll mess up everything on there. Anyway, I think ya'll get the gist of my problems and I would very much appreciate any help you could give me. Oh yeah, 2 questions. one place told me that if I reinstall from the OEM disk that It'll write over everything yet another place, I think Microsoft Tech place, it mentioned something about a " Safe recovery" being done from the disk - Know anything about it ? Second question....hmmm... slips my poor mind at the moment but hopefully ya'll will fix me right up. I'll ponder it a while and get back to ya. Oh, I think it was the splash screen, seems I saw that it means something like maybe my files are in fact still there or something. Does it ? Thanx Guys/Gals for anything you can do for me.

When you do a Dir of the C: drive does it list sub directries of WINDOWS, PRPGRA~1 ? At the A: prompt type in FDISK say yes to large disk support, select option #4 post displayed resaults. We will have a better idea what is needed.

It should be typed this way: scanreg /restore note the space between scanreg and the / if you did it this way: scanreg/restore that's why it didn't work. Thresher

There are a lot of ways something "won't work" - which is why that's not a very useful description. From a DOS start in Win9x, the space is optional - I'd tend to think the same holds true for WinME. At any rate, scanreg/restore is only useful for rolling back the registry - a Windows problem - what's (kind of) being reported here: "No Boot partition" would seem to be a problem on a more basic level than that. Sounds very much like there are some serious disk problems - as suggested, the information from fdisk option (4) might be very helpful Why don't they make computers that will do what we think we want them to do?

Results of your requests are as follows: C:\> DIR (results are below) ATTRIB EXE 15,252 07/06/00 20:05 CHKDSK EXE 27,968 07/06/00 20:05 COMMAND COM 93,040 08/06/00 17:00 DEBUG EXE 20,490 (hope it's ok but I'll skip the rest of the dates and times and just list the names- if not then let me know and I'll redo) EDIT COM EXT EXE ETRACT EXE FORMAT COM HELP BAT MSCDEX EXE README TXT SCANDISK EXE SCANDISK INI SYS COM 14 file(s) 655,851 0 dir (s) 1,427,456 I then went back to A:\> I typed FDISK after prompt (A:\>FDISK), hit Enter and answer came back as " No fixed disk present" A more specific answer as far as the partition error is as follows: Booted up with Emergency floppy in the drive and picked the option of "Without CDROM", it sucessfully loaded dianostic tools and came back and said "Windows Millium Edition has detected that drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. There are several possible causes for this. 1. The drive may need to be partitioned. To create a partion on the drive, run FDISK from the MS-DOS command prompt. 2. You may be using third party disk partioning software. If you are using this type of software, remove flop disk and restart your computer. Then follow the on screen instructions. 3. Some viruses also may cause your drive C to not register. You can use a virus scanning program to check your C drive. For Thresher - Yes I know that there's usually no space between scanreg and the / . The few times I've seen that restore command mentioned at the Microsoft website they are the ones that put the space in there when they typed it up so I figured there must have been a good reason for doing that so I did the same. I did not use the space there when I was on the downed computer. Side note for jboy: You are correct Good Sir - the mentioned command is the same for Windows 98 (or 98 SE) and Windows Me and the space in that command is in fact optional. To TopFarmer and all, I appreciate your time and efforts on this and patiently await your futher help and instructions. I've got a feeling I though I shouldn't get my hopes up very high as far as reclaiming any good data off this disk goes. Hopefully ya'll will have something up that talented sleeve of yours that'll change that ! I hope all of you are having a great Christmas with many smiles, Sparxwillfli

Sparxwillfli, Some questions, if you wouldn't mind answering. 1.) Two parts. Have you changed any settings in your BIOS? If so, have you tried changing them back? 2.) If you go into your BIOS settings, is the hard drive listed? If it's listed, is it properly recognized? 3.) On/with a normal startup, do you still at least get the splash screen? 4.) In your BIOS settings, is it set to AUTO, for your IDE devices? 5.) What is the setting in your BIOS, for FIRST boot device? {floppy, HDD-0, ect.} 6.) If you're not getting the splash screen. Have you check the physical connections, of your hard drive? {data cable to hard drive, and to motherboard - power cable to hard drive} 7.) By chance, does this computer have RAID capabilities? If it does, are they being utilized? 8.) Are you using a drive overlay program, on that disk? 9.) Could you give the model, manufacturer name, and BIOS version - if known. 10.) Have you added/changed the hard drive? If so, back to a prior question. Did you have to use a drive overlay program. So your BIOS would see it properly. 11.) "...It pulls up 12 different directories... When was this, and how did you accomplish it? 12.) Is there any hard disk activity, show by the LED, on the computer case? {lighting, flashing, staying lighted - when booting with, or without the boot disk} Loads of questions, still in my mind! What you gave, is the virtual drive's files. It is created {in RAM} when you boot with the startup disk. Since there was no C:\, it used that address. CrazyOne

I have a similar problem. I was attempting to install XP on my friends computer (she has Millinum right now). She wanted everything wiped out and started new, so I used the 6 Windows XP boot disk. I went through all of that and when it was time to insert the XP cd rom, it went for a bit and then stated it couldn't continue. A message saying the disk may be damaged came up. I decided to abandon it and tried to reboot but now I get the message saying operating system not found. I have no idea what to do now. ADeniseJ