I have a very old computer, which had windows 3.1 installed (worked fine). I wanted to install windows 98, so i used a win98 startup disk to fdisk the hard drive. That went fine, but when the computer restarted, it wouldn't open the a: (win98 startup disk), but gave a message "missing operating system." I cant access the bios either, by pressing the delete key. What can i do? thanks.

Like I already suggested, have you tried using the FDISK utility?

There are a bunch of resources for this via Google search:

http://www.google.com/...ade+operating+system


The best resource I've used in the past has been:

http://www.fdisk.com/
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

Well if you've fdisk'd the drive then there is no OS available, hence the error. You need to install an OS :)

Here are some more resources:

http://www.google.com/...+no+operating+system

You might want to check out http://www.bootdisk.com if you are having problems with your WIN98 boot disk.
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

How? I already Fdisked the drive, but now it won't recognize the win98 boot disk (to format and install windows). Also, I am unable to go into the BIOS. Any key I press, during power up, results in an error beep, and the "missing operating system" error remains on the screen.

Check out the resources I linked in my last reply...if you go to http://www.bootdisk.com/, you can download an image of a boot disk that may work for you.
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

If the machine is really that old then you may have a 720K floppy drive and a 1.4 mb floppy disk.