Did a partition of my Dell Inspiron 560 desktop pc hard drive, but before I could format it, it responded with " Missing Operating System". I then rebooted the pc into the BIOS to change the boot device to the DVD/CD drive and saved the settings and rebooted the pc with a cd that has windows 98 2nd edition. That did'nt work so I tried Windows Vista cd, Windows 7 cd & etc. But what happens every time is that the pc says "Missing Operating System".I ran a diagnostic test and everything passed.
I NEED SOMEONE HELP WITH A SOLUTION!
Hamguy 0 Newbie Poster
JorgeM 958 Problem Solver Team Colleague Featured Poster
The message you see if because the computer is unable to find a bootable source.
What is your objective? Are you trying to perform a clean install of an OS?
If so, go back to the BIOS, make sure that your DVD drink has a higher boot priority. Then boot off the Bootable DVD media that has the OS install files.
If you are trying to install anything older than Win 2000, you don't need to format the disk first. Boot the DVD, start a clean install process, partition and format during the install process
Hamguy 0 Newbie Poster
Thanks JorgeM, but I have already tried a clean install with Windows 98, and also put DVD on the BIOS as the priority boot. None of this works; the computer does not boot. I am open for more suggestions...Thanks.
JorgeM 958 Problem Solver Team Colleague Featured Poster
Its been a while but I do not recall the Win 9x CDs being bootable. For 9x, a bootable floppy disk was required to first fdisk then format prior to running setup.exe from the command prompt, if I'm not mistaken.
Hamguy 0 Newbie Poster
Your right JorgeM, but I did use the Win98 CD to boot before and installed Windows Vista with no problems. My computer did not come with a floppy disk drive, and don't know if there is a compatible floppy disk drive for my Dell desktop computer.
Little Relhok 0 Newbie Poster
It sounds to me like it is not seeing the CD before the hard drive. I would double check in the BIOS if the CD is the first boot media and I would try and put the hard drive as the last boot media. Also make sure that the boot CD you are using is truley a bootable CD. Sometimes I'll do this by puting it in another computer and see if it boots to an install screen.
JorgeM 958 Problem Solver Team Colleague Featured Poster
Also if you have a copy of Vista and if that is what you are trying to install you don't need Win 98.
Try using the Vista on another computer to make sure the DVD is not damaged. If it boots, you know that you have a problem with the BIOS config, or your DVD player has a problem.
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