hard drive not found error msg

[alice]

moved computer to another room.  tried to intstall d-link software and then got illegal function msg and computer shut down.  at first reboot nothing happened..  blank screen.  then son erased the hard disc and now we are trying to re-install windows 98.  when we try to boot from disc we get the msg "can not find hard disc".... does anyone know what the prob might be?  

[merlin_2]

lose ide cable...in the case......son reformating hard drive? and not fdisking the drive  by using the command fdisk  after the A:\> prompt........      so its looks like this A:\> fdisk more info here>http://www.computerhope.com/sfdisk1.htm

[darboleary]

merlin  or anybody- after trying a:/> fdisk we got the msg "no fixed disks present"... could this be contributable to a loose ide cable?  or something else.. any other ideas or how we can tell if we do in fact have a lose ide cable?  and... sounding stupid here.. what on earth is an ide cable?

[merlin_2]

no fixed disk present......can mean that you need to fdisk the disk......in other words make it active??or the ide cable have come lose therefore it is not detected
more info on ide cables>>http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000413.htm   the information contained here should help you ......ok

[Raptor]

If you wish to install Windows 98, you will either have to boot directly off the CD or use a Boot diskette.

You need set either the FDD or the CD-ROM drive as the first boot device in the BIOS, it may be set to keep booting off the HDD even though nothing there is present.

[pcdoc4christ]

...  then son erased the hard disc and now we are trying to re-install windows 98.  when we try to boot from disc we get the msg "can not find hard disc" .... 

Alice:

When you say your "son erased the hard disk" do you mean that he used a Windows 98 boot disk to start the FDisk utility and deleted the partition?  If so, you will need to use the boot disk to start the computer and then use FDisk to create a new partition.  Then you will need to use the [size=13]format [/size]command to format the new partition with the FAT32 file system.  Then you may restart the computer with the Windows 98 installation CD to install the operating system on the new partition you created and formatted.

Let us know if you need more help.
Doc