Command.com missing or corrupt?

I just bought a refurbished laptop for school, which came with a power thing, a floppy drive, and Windows 98. That's all. No disks, nothing. Well, my cousin thought he'd be..nice? ..I suppose, and told me he would upgrade my Windows to Windows 2000. Apparently, however, he was using a bootlegged CD, which lacked the drivers necessary to run the Windows. Now, whenever I try to start my computer, it says "Command.com is missing or corrupt.." I can't even boot with Windows 98. Can anyone help me solve this little dilemma?

command.com is one of the 3 files that are the basis of MS-DOS. needless to say that this file is critical to windows and you need to reinstall. i reccomend wiping that hdd and starting over with a fresh install. it is possible that a virus or some other malicious software causedthe change as well.

Most likely the Windows 2000 install process wiped the Win98 that was underneath. You will have to reinstall.

Okay. I have to reinstall. But, how do I start up my computer to do that? I am SOOOO not computer savvy. And does this mean, since I never received a Windows disk to begin with, that I am just going to have to go out and buy another copy of Windows? Since it's a new laptop, I don't really have anything important saved on it...so I will do ANYTHING to get it back to working. Because...eventually..I am going to need to save important things on it. And it not starting up is simply not condusive to my future plans.

You bought what you bought. If you did not get a CD with Windows with your lappy then most likely it was illegal anyway. You could go and demand a Windows CD from whoever sold you the laptop. They have to supply it with a legal Windows copy (or at least give you some license thingie which you can use to get a CD from a MS reseller)

You could check the laptop for a Windows license sticker too. If it has one then technically you could obtain the corresponding Windows version from anywhere (download, copy, beg from a computer shop) you like and install it with no legal concerns.