my mom's old computer is not loading up.

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It keeps on saying to hit the F1 key then back it up. But after that It tells me that there is a invalid disc and to take it out and restart. It was running on windows 98, i tried to boot it up with puppy linux but when puppy linux said it was looking for files in the hard drive, it never went on to boot up puppy (I left it on all night last night). What is wrong with it?

What's the full message that tell you to hit F1?

Some possibilities that comes to mind is harddisk failure and low CMOS battery error.

it said hard disk will failure and to back up my data soon.

I'm thinking the hard drive could be dead...

I would go into BIOS [F2] [DEL] by default and check standard date and time settings. Usually date and time are one of the first things to reset during CMOS. It can be difficult in advising without knowing the exact model of the motherboard

I think that is a SMART error. Basically, your harddisk is telling you that it will fail soon. You should really herd the warning and replace the harddisk.

Getting a new hard drive fitted is not expensive. Even transferring all the contents from old to new. I see so many people just "re0installing" as they see it's the only way. There are hard disk tools for recover, backup, and even copy to new location/hard drive upgrade

It might be the disk is full, being old and 98. Try F8, safe mode, which loads minimal drivers, and check the contents of C.

A dead hard drive reads no drive found. Back up data, means it is working, but you are running out of space.

Open the contents of C, and delete unneeded files. Disk cleanup and other tools do not work in safe mode, go manual, Windows Explorer. Be sure to finish with empty recycle bin. Then shut down and try a normal restart. 15% empty is needed for defragmentation, below 5% things turn strange, I think you are there.

If you get a normal restart, go on a cookie hunt, get rid of everything, till you can run disk cleanup and defragmentation. Restart is not shut down, down, dead, then start.

As for programs, go to control panel, add remove programs, and uninstall, which is not the same as delete from Windows explorer, that just gets rid of the file, unstall goes deeper. Make sure you are running one internet program, and one antivirus, they do not play well with others. Do this first, then go to Windows explorer and remove the files, then desktop icons, start menu.

I have bought many computers from thrift stores, this works most of the time.

Get the Ultimate Boot CD and then run Salvation Scan and Repiar. That will repiar the HD's bad sectors.

Actually [F8] is not safe mode... It's the boot menu list of options. [F5] goes straight to safe mode. This will work with both Windows 95 and 98. I doubt a full hard drive would cause this error

All true. I remember Dells saying 'immanent failure' errors. Could be the boot sector as well. If you ever manage to get it up and running, back up immediately.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVVJXOwzppI[/youtube]

this is what it says

if you have a cd, dvd, flopy or zip disk in the computer it will say that
or if your hard drive is bad or if you need to re install the operating system

there is no CD, floppy or anything else in it.

The error is about your harddisk. Since it isn't being recognized at all, the partition table may be corrupted or in the worst case, the disk is already dead. If you have already tried a live cd, then the later is more likely the case. You can try another live cd bundle or try to read it on another computer. But honestly I don't think the chance is good.

The first part of the video is very blur. The screen does seem a little crowded though. Your BIOS may just be talkative, or there may be something else.

Talkative? Looks about standard for its era. That's how a lot of BIOS/POSTs were done. Rather than a slow warm up screen time.

Jesus, who uses Windows 98 anymore?