Operating System Not Found

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Operating System Not Found

Boots directy to black screen with "operating system not found"

Metatronlord

4:23 pm on Feb 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

I turned my HP Omnibook on today and it comes up to a black screen with "Operating System Not Found". That's it, that's all. On my home computer (XP Pro) I created a XP Boot disc on cd. I can get into the BIOS and have it set to boot to 1) CD 2) Floppy, 3) HD. It never hits my cd rom. I then created a DOS boot disc on floppy and can boot to an a;\> prompt. But if I try to change directories I get "Invalid Drive Specification". Please don't ask why, but the notebook was running Windows ME. I want to go ahead an upgrade to XP but can't get it to boot from the CD rom. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

RussellC

10:04 pm on Feb 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

Sounds like, either your hard drive is dead or you have logical corruption of the boot sector.

eelixduppy

10:13 pm on Feb 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Metatronlord!

I've had this problem once before. It was my hard drive--completely fried. I had to replace it and I lost all of my data. One more reason why you should back up all your important stuff.

jimbeetle

10:24 pm on Feb 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

When you pick up a new hard drive also get a 2.5" external drive enclosure. After your new drive is set up, search around for data or file recovery software. Many of the products are "play before you pay" so you can first see what can be recovered by the product before ponying up the cash. Try a couple of them if you have to, but you might be able to recover a lot of your files

dreamcatcher

7:35 am on Feb 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

I had this very same thing happen about 2 weeks ago. Only happened once. Switched the laptop off and then back on again and its been ok ever since. Strange.

appi2

8:30 am on Feb 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

On my home computer (XP Pro) I created a XP Boot disc on cd.

May be wrong, but if your created the boot disc on another pc it might not work on your laptop.

If you know your drive manufacturer you may be able to get a drive check utility from their website.

If you have any linux discs handy pop one of those in and give it a try. You can run the install up to where it looks for your hard drive and bail out. If it finds it then its possibly just the mbr.

Don't assume you've lost your data, yet.

If the BIOS lists the hard drive then it's (probably) not totally dead, yet.

kaled

2:04 pm on Feb 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

If you can boot from a cd or floppy, try using the command fdisk /mbr. The program fdisk.exe must be present on your boot disk and should be a 98/ME version.

That should either fix it or provide further clues.

If necessry, you can use Winzip to locate and extract fdisk.exe from the .cab files on the CD.

Kaled.