no boot file recived

[jlee031]

my freinds laptop computer says this when u turn it on - no boot file recieved operating system not found
does this mean i gota reformate his hard drive then re load the os

[tcappert]

The first question would be what OS. I assume there is not a floppy disk in the system that the system is attemping to boot from.
Insure that the boot files have not become corrupted:
Windows 98 are different from 2000 & XP boot files-reinstall them on the system
and it might just work.
Depending on what (if anything) was done to the system to precipitate the problem...could be a hard drive gone bad.
Check BIOS to see if the hard drive is being identified.
Good Luck

[jlee031]

i can put BIOS in the dos screen right

[jlee031]

i know where bios is so never mind about that butalso my freinds boot disk are at his parents house in another state and he has a lap top i have a pc will my boot disk work on his

also i just down loaded and burnd mandrake can i just load that on his laptop or do i have to clean it out

[tcappert]

The boot disk will work if the OS type is the same. You have to use a Win98 boot disk for Win98 or the ME or 2000/XP boot disk for those OS's. Check out
http://www.bootdisk.com/they have any boot disk required and available for free download.
Mandrake has its own partitioning agent so you can install it on the laptop. Any distro of Linux can be a bit weird with laptops...so it will install but it may not work correctly which is my experience with my old Dell Laptop and Mandrake.