I received a windows 98 computer that was giving the owner problems. He stated that no matter what, it always booted to the setup screen. He was unable to get past it. I have observed this but was able to get past it and found that most of the contents of the HD were scrambled. Files listed in the C: directory had several letters wrong in the names. After much work, I finally gave up and reformatted the HD. Even that will not work. After formatting "successfully", it stops and states it cannot find or format the "boot". I was eventually able to get part of the HD formatted (it does not work as normal). There is an unexplained 30% of the HD missing. Now the problem is that anything I put on the C drive, instantly undergoes changes in the letters and will not work. i.e. when looking at the partition information on the fdisk screen, instead of stating it is fat32, it has changed to read F@T22. Even when I copy a file to the c drive, it instantly changes the name. I tried to download an antvirus file from the net, but I cannot unzip it. I want to try a low level format but have run out of options. Has this thing a virus? I cannot think of anything else. The only thing that does work so far without a hitch is the CDROM. Unfortunately I don't have a CDROM antivirus program that will work on DOS.
Can anyone give me some ideas? I am at wits end at this point. Thank you all in advance.