Operating System Not Found

[Charlotte45042]

I have a HP Pavilion 8665C - the hard drive appears to have failed - I tried to place a used hard drive in and use the recovery disk then i get the message about needing to use the Fdisk - I loaded the start up disk in the floppy and then turned on the machine and now it says I have no operating system.

Any suggestions on what to do ???

 

[just_a_nobody]

Hi Charlotte, sounds like quite a dilemma you have. Do you know what operating system is on the old drive that you just installed and is it the same as your original operating system? What problem were you having with the original drive? Could you give us more info on your system?

 

[Charlotte45042]

I am not sure what is on the current hard drive. It was given to me. The hard drive i took out was formated with w/98 and then it started displaying the message the operating system was not found.

 

[just_a_nobody]

Ok, so you just took for granted, that the original hard drive was bad, because you got the "no operating system was found" error. Do you know how to get into the computer's BIOS, and see if the hard drive is recognized? Do you know how to clear the CMOS? Do you have the original Win98 install CD?

Do you have a Win98 bootdisk? If no bootdisk, download one here: http://www.bootdisk.com/

If you boot from the bootdisk, and then enter the C: prompt, and then type "dir" (without quotes), and it will list the directories, on the new hard drive, and you should be able to see, if there is an operating system, on the new hard drive.

If there is no operating system, put the original hard drive back in, and see if that shows up in the BIOS. If it doesn't, check your cable connections, try another ribbon cable. You might try clearing your CMOS, or perhaps, your battery may be bad too.

Well, let's see what we have from here, before going any further.

 

[just_a_nobody]

If you have the Win98 install disk, and a bootdisk, you could try and fdisk, and reformat that new drive, slave your original drive to it, and copy any files that you would like to keep to the other drive.