hELP Cannot find OS

[mrlee]

I have installed MSdos 71 on my old HP Vectra 386 but I cant get it to boot up. After bios its says 'Cannot find operating system' then it hangs.   There is no other OS on this system. When I use a startup floppy for win 98 to get to dos prompt and I type autoexec, then MSdos starts up.  I have done the sys c: and it was a success, I even tried tinkering with MSDos.sys file but after several fdisk /mbr, rebuilding mbr etc, I am still not able to boot from C: hard drive.

Any help is appreciatedhttps://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?action=post;board=2.0.

[Geek-9pm]

How did you install MSdos 71 on ... old HP Vectra 386?
And why?

11) Vectra 386/25 (1990) 12) Vectra 386/20N (1991) 13) Vectra 486N (1992) 14) Vectra 486U (1992) The Vectra was HP's first IBM-compatible PC. It was introduced in 1985. While the 150 had been HP's first MS-DOS computer, it did not succeed because it was not program compatible with the IBM PC and it did not come standard with a 5.25 inch floppy ...

http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=2&cat=42
Di you not know this? You ha veto use the version o fDOS made by HP back then.

[Lisa_maree]

Hi Mr Lee,

What make and model hard drive is dos installed onto was it the original drive from the HP  ?

Have you checked the bios hard drive configuration is correct. if it is set in correctly you may be able to access files but not boot.

If the above is correct then is the hard drive working in the old days hard drives used rest the heads on the first cylinder of the drive where the boot files were stored. If there is difficulties reading this area then the drive won't boot.
You could use this from a floppy disk    http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
To test the hard drive.