computer crash

go into the bios... does it identify the hard drive is there? If not, the drive is bad.

When I encountered a similar issue, I loaded a new hard-drive and placed the best virus protection I could on it. Running Win98 and Norton Anti-Virus with to-the-hour virus updates, I then slaved the old hard-drive in. Cleaning became easy then.
I hope this might not be the case, but if it is an option, it worked for me.

hopefully you have a boot disk? You will lose all info. Put in boot disk and at A:\ type "format / c" then be patient, takes a few. Then when the choice arrives choose boot with cdrom support, then at the next a:\ type "D:" then type "setup" with the WIN98 cd in the drive. Then I recommned an upgrade to XP home from there, Good Luck!

Do you have a zorch disk? If you do put it in the a drive
and let it run, then when prompted, type mbr, this will
erase and kill everything, including the virus that got
you. Then put in your boot disk, (if you don't have one,
go to bootdisk.com) for a free copy (use the libraries
computer free), then put in a drive, do an fdisk, partition
your drive, then format, with the win 98 boot disk you
can use the cd rom drive (as the driver is in it), put in
your win 98 cd and go. hope this helps. Jan

must check if seen in bios or not first
if it is can try following debug script
you'll need a bootable ffloppy disk and copy debug to it from system32 folder.Its a good idea to have fdisk on it also.
- boot from the floppy disk and at the A:, type:
debug and enter - will bring up the dash and type following and enter at end of each line:
F 200 L1000 0
A CS:100
MOV AX,301
MOV BX,200
MOV CX,1
MOV DX,80
INT 13
INT 20
(Leave this line blank and press the Enter)
G
The message, Program terminated normally, will appear.
reboot now and try fdisk from the bootable floppy.

Did you use a Windows Statup disk? How are you trying to do a format. Check the BIOS setup also.