can't boot from 160Gb WD Caviar

Hello everyone.
I have a problem with a 160 Gb HDD Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm that came in an emachine.

I had to to a system restore because i'm gonna sell the computer, but after I finished with the 3 cds series of the system restore, the computer won't start. It says "no operating system found"

I tried to install win xp manually, but after formating and copying all the files into the hdd, it doesn't restart, it gives me the same error again.

I tried installing win 98 and it works, but it doesn't work with xp or 2000 ...... go figure.

I think that my boot sector got damaged and it has something to do with the size of the boot sector required for win 98 vs. xp or 2000.

Do you know how to fix a boot sector? If that is what is wrong with my hdd.

I have fdisked the hdd many times, I have created partitions with Partition Magic 7.0 and still nothing, the computer won't start.

BIOS detects the hdd with no problem.

(^^;?(I think if Win98 can boot, mbr should be good.)

Then though I think it's just copying failure, if you want to sell it.

First check it by powermax or IBM drive fitness test. Trifling errors may be found. Next try to upgrade from Win98. If it fails, once copy \i386 or whole recovery to HDD and set it up from there.

Try installing the suspect drive into a working computer. See if it will recognize the drive. Try to fdisk it in the working computer. If that works, try to ghost the contents of the C drive in the working machine onto the suspect drive. Now see if the working computer will boot from the ghosted suspect drive. That way, you can isolate the problem and see if it's the puter or the drive that has the problem. If the drive ghosts and works in the known-good machine, move it to the emachine, boot to safe mode, and delete all the devices from Device Manager. Then install emachine drivers as needed.