I just recieved a Compaq Persario desktop. I believe it's a 5000 series.
specs:
AMD Athlon 1.1 ghz
128 megs of ram
60 gig hard drive
16 meg Nvidia graphics card
dvd-rom
cd-burner
Windows ME

The machine boots up and says "operating system not found". I then rebooted it with a windows ME boots disk. I did a Dir /p search in DOS and it came back with a few files but no OS or personal files. I displayed the partition in fdisk. It thinks it's only using 3 gigs of the total 60 which is like 6% I belive. I ran scandisk on it and when it got to the serface (spelling?) scan I thinks the drive has data. The lady who brought it in recieved a registry error before it crashed. She used a Windows 98 restore disk that came with the machine (why on earth compaq gave her a 98 restore disk when the machine runs ME makes no sense) thats when the machine decided that it wasn't going to boot any more. She had pictures and files on the drive which does not appear to be formated just fdisked in a really odd way. the partition that is there is not set active either. My question is there any way or software I can use to retreive the data off the hard drive? I also tried booting of a Knoppix (linux on cd) cd-rom but the machine didn't like it or something so I gave up on that. Could the hard drive possibly be shot?

Yes, it seems like the hard drive is shot!