Have an Advent laptop running vista which was working fine 1 week ago when last shut down. Turned on today, and informed that there was no OS installed.
I am thinking hard disk problem, but am not able to access settings to investigate further.
Is a big ask but any ideas folks...thnx

If you are quoting the message correctly it means that probably the boot sector has been damaged.

You need to repair it, and Microsoft has given a detailed guide about how to go about it. I hope this will help alleviate your problem.

Once (and hopefully successful) this repair completes, don't forget to update you AntiVirus software and run a system scan; also download malwarebytes, and run it after installation, to ensure your system is clean.

Please let me know if I can be of any further help. Regards

Ty Archean, project on hold

After inserting vista disk (not the OEM) it started ok, but stopped shortly and said the laptop was missing drivers.Luckily my friend has Advent driver disk which i am waiting for in the post. Hopefully this will enable me to run repair.