Operating system

maybe your system file was corrupted or somebody delete it...all you have to do is reinstall your OS.

It sounds like the BIOS CMOS memory has lost the settings for the hard drive (battery flat maybe?) Try autodetecting the hard disk in the BIOS and seeing if it now boots. It may also be that the hard drive is larger than natively supported by the motherboard and was originally set up using EZBios, Maxblast or OnTrack Disk Manager....in which case you CAN get your data back, but you need to know what you are doing!!

nvillahermosa and GuruOfDos are right, but there's more for a scenario where the machine starts, but can't find the OS. Things to check are:
1) BIOS as GuruOfDos says.
2) If a bootable floppy is available, try booting to DOS and changing to C: ,If it works, reintall the OS as nvillahermosa already said.

If it doesn't work, either the drive, cable or controller is bad. So the next steps are:
3) Try checking/changing the cable. Reseat each end and try reboot.
4 If still no good, try replacing it. Just make sure the "red" line on the cable ( pin 0 ) stays aligned the same.
5) if still no good, swap the hard drive for one that's known to be good, and formatted. Go back to step repeat step 2.
If results are still bad controller is the next guess. At this point, try to contact the PC Manufacturer. It could (although unlikely) be the controller, usually part of the motherboard. Add-in controller boards run $50 & up. While very unusual, it could happen.

Most likely iseither 1) BIOS, 2) cable, 3) bad drive.
Let us know what the solution ends up as.

2) Check the cable -- make sure it's plugged in at both ends securely.
3)
2) Controller -- might be bad, but not too likely. The cable to the drive might be loose at either end -- a relativly easy thing to verify. Next comes t the Hard drive itself -- a VERY LIKELY suspect to have gone bad. Easiest way to check is, if available, swap in a different hard drive that's known to be good and try booting.

Remember not to look over the obvious item here - make sure you don't have a non-bootable floppy disk in the disk drive, or have a non-bootable cd in the cd rom drive frist. since I think the full message you should have listed is "Operating System not found - please incert disk with Operating system (sic)" - then I would move to the bootable floppy and do a sys c: this is for dos and win95/98 comtpuers and see what happens from that then move into the other stuff mentioned.

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