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General discussion

Missing Operating System

Feb 19, 2004 2:10AM PST

I bought a PC off of eBay a few weeks ago (a Compaq with 4GB HD and 64MB RAM), and I've now begun trying to get it up and running. I knew it needed an operating system when I bought it, and I just happened to have an old Windows 95 disk.
Okay, so I have seen people install a new operating system to a blank hard drive from a C: prompt. My problem here is that I don't have that prompt. When I power on the PC, it goes through all of its steps, telling you about the amount of RAM, etc., then displays "Missing Operating System". After that, it won't do anything. I know next to nothing about installing operating systems, but I assumed that this meant I needed a boot disk to get to a prompt of some kind, but a friend in another state told me that wasn't the case...I could boot from a CD. He said I could get into the BIOS and set it up to boot from the CD-ROM.
So, I hit F10 while the computer was booting and got into Setup, then went into "Boot Order" (I assume this has something to do with what order the computer looks for something to boot from?) It said "CD-ROM First", then listed the Floppy as Second and Hard Drive as Third, etc., so I didn't change anything. I'm taking this to mean that it IS trying to boot from the CD-Rom, but something isn't working for me here. Regardless of whether or not the Windows 95 disc is in the drive or not, it still tells me "Missing Operating System" after displaying the Compaq startup screen and doesn't give me a prompt or anything.

So could anyone help me figure out what's going on? I know I sound extremely helpless, and in this, I guess I am. I'm pretty confident in doing things after the operating system is installed, but without that middleman, when I have to work directly with the computer, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Missing Operating System
Feb 19, 2004 2:19AM PST

In short, your machine didn't boot the Floppy or the CD and proceeded to the hard disk and rightly failed.

Make a NEW BOOT DISKETTE with a NEW DISKETTE with the help of http://www.bootdisk.com Remember you run the .EXE and it makes the DISKETTE. Some copy the .EXE to the diskette and that's not going to do much...

Bob

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In other words. . .
Feb 19, 2004 8:17PM PST

W95 is not a boot disk. You have to have the boot floppy and boot from the A: drive, format the HD, transfer the System files to the HD (from the floppy), then run setup for W95.

Go where Bob said and download the boot floppy.

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Re:Missing Operating System
Feb 22, 2004 3:46PM PST

Dear Reader,
I also ran into this problem, if I remembered right I had a windows95 on diskettes with an startup diskette. Using that first I could then install Windows. I think you can also try installing first a dos 6.* and from tbe C> install Windows 95.
Succes

Tim der Kinderen