Operating System Not Found

Hi
Working on my old Dell Dimension XPX D233 the other day it froze up. I turned it off and on again and it made some strange noises. I turned it off again and when it booted I saw that the C drive didn't load and then I got the above mentioned message. I've done plenty of research since and it seems that I need to see if the C drive is active in the BIOS. I haven't been able to get past the request for a password to be able to change said BIOS. I have removed the CMOS battery for hours and unplugged everything from the unit so it couldn't draw any power from anywhere and yet when I boot up again and hit the delete button I get back to the password request screen. I don't know what the jumper looks like so haven't as of yet removed that. My OS is Windows Millennium (ancient I know). Has the old girl just passed on? When I enter scandisk from a DOS prompt it checks both the C and D drive so they still exist but it's obviously not seeing the C drive at boot up.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Bob J

That error means the master boot record and/or the boot files are missing or damaged. If you can get to a Windows command prompt, try the command:

sys c: