Lost c: drive

Was trying to restore operating system on c: drive using CD (that I had already tried restoring to a USB drive). Couldn't read 2nd CD so cancelled. But lost the operating system and when I finally get to a dos prompt I can't get to the original c: drive. Dos is seeing my 2nd hard drive as c, d, and e (when it used to be d e f)

Tried the original manufacturers recovery disk and they just put the system on the 2nd drive's first partition. So it still says missing operating system.

Was going to use fdisk to make sure the c: drive is a boot disk, but how do I know that fdisk is seeing the first hard drive. Have lost of info on the 2nd hard drive.

A windows startup disk (recovery) just loads into a virtual drive f: and can't load the CD ROM drivers so I can't book to the Acronis CD.

Was using Windows 98 (yeah I know it's old) and V-com's system commander 7.

If someone could point me in the right direction, would be much appreciated.

 

I finally go V-com's System Commander's Partition Commander to load off a floppy disk. It showed my C: Drive as "free". Is letting me partition to Primary Fat32, so unless that doesn't work, I"m OK.

 

Well, I finally have the c: drive back but I can't get Windows to boot. Went back into Partition Commander and made it bootable, but it still doesn't boot. Tried fdisk /mbr but that didn't help. Last message I got (without any disk in drive a: ): Non-system disk, Insert DOS disk and press any key to continue.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks

 

did u take out the floppy before booting?

 

Yes. No disk in drive a:

 

Resolved non-system disk error by reloading windows using the format and recovery instead of just recovery.