Spanish boot up error message

[Annie]

Any Spanish speakers out there?
A friend is failing to boot & getting this message just after the system displays the BIOS software message:
'Erroneo o inexistente: interprete de comandos'
An online translator I found offered this: 'I err or not existent I interpret of commands'
Can anyone shed any light on this please?
He's using a 133 Pentium II with Award v4.50PG BIOS running Win 3.1.

[emcron]

That means you are missing the command interpreter. I think this mean command.com is gone or something. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Glytzhkof]

That is correct emcron. If you format a drive by just writing: format c:\ no system files will be written to the drive and hence it will not be bootable. The solution in this case is to use a bootable floppy to start up the system and then copy the command.com to the c:\ drive.

The best way to format a drive is to write: format c:\ /s. The "/s" switch causes the system files to be copied to the drive automatically so that it will be bootable.

Be aware that if this has "just happened" without a reformat it "smells like a virus".

For a description of the "format command": http://log.on.ca/users/rhwatson/dos7/index.html .

[Annie]

Thanks for the feedback - I've just been told that the cause of the message was because there was a disk in the A drive which would tie in with what you've told me.
Seems odd to me though that it didn't generate the normal 'non'system disk' or whatever message that generally pops up - presume that may depend on what was on the disk (a very old graphics program apparently)?
Thanks again for your help.