No Boot only, OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND.

[lukeshupe]

Just got a call from my sister away at college and she says this morning she went to turn on her computer and it wont boot, it only displays operating system not found, but it sounds as if the HDD is running. Any ideas, im going to see her this weekend to try and fix. What could cause this to happen all of a sudden? Its an older HP Pavillion AMD 900mHz, dont really remember the rest of the the details, just your basic best buy off the shelf system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Lucas

 

[Liquidlen]

You have not given any info on the machine eg. O/S. so you could start Here
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html
Since the machine is older it may be Win 98 in which case you can use the same info above but adapt for a 98 machine .

 

[lukeshupe]

Sorry, shes running Windows XP Home edition (I think SP2, but i could be wrong).

 

[ManyVoicesOfMe]

Sounds to me more like the hardrive went bad. Sure it may sound like it's working, it may still be spinning inside, but that doesn't mean it is working properly. The check to see if the BIOS is even picking it up anymore.

Try that link that Liquidlen posted before making a conclusion and buying a new hardrive. If that link doesn't help you, then "yep" it's the HD.

 

[lukeshupe]

It was the hard drive, just picked up a great deal at Circuit City, 120gig EIDE 7200rpm Western Digital for 49.99. I got her back up and running, guess it was the hard drive. My try it on my pc to see if i can get anything off of it, she had a bunch of pictures on the there the of course didnt back up so im gonna see what i can figure out. If anyone has any suggestions they are for sure welcome.

Thanks,
Lucas

 

[patio]

Before you attempt to retrieve the data you want to be prepared as you might not get another chance...
1) Make sure it is jumpered as a slave before you introduce it into your system...
2)Make sure you have enough HD space to copy all the files on the drive, i would recommend double checking your free space on your HD.
3)Find out what kind of HD it is and Dload the manufacturers diagnostics from the web. I have found that their native disk copy utilities often work best especially if you might get only one attempt.
4)Another thing i do is dis-connect all my other drives and use seperate IDE connections for this operation: i.e. my drive is on IDE 0 and the source drive (your sister's ) is on IDE 1. This makes for a quicker transfer than having both drives on the same channel.
5)Do a test setup on your machine and eliminate as many background processes/programs as possible.
Then and only then would i hook up the failing drive...

Hope this helps.

patio.

 

[patio]

P.S. i almost forgot...Keep your fingers crossed....

patio.