Operating System not found !!

[vivekck]

My System gave a hard disk read error while booting.I restarted the system and now it gives a message "Operating System not found on any device".
I tried the commmand Fdisk which returns a message "No fixed disks found".
I also tried reloading Windows from a CDROM which can automatically reformat the harddisk and install Windows, but unfortunately even that stops after the initial screen appears.

Please do let me know if there are any options I could try to get the system up and running.

[TheSkippyKing]

I will defer to the masters , but your symtoms sound like you'll be shopping for a new HDD & mourning all your lost data (if not backed up somewhere else):(

[GreetingsNerdlings]

did this happen on a previously running system, or did you just build it? if it happened to a computer that used to work, is there anything you did to it before the problem started?

anyway, for starters, make sure that your ide cables on the hd and the mobo are seated properly, as well as the power cable to the hd.

[Budfred]

Welcome to PCGuide!!

We need a lot more info to help figure this out. Some questions:

What are your system specs?
Do you use an antivirus, spyware scanner, and firewall? If you do, are they up to date and were they running or run recently?
Did you recently load any new software or hardware?
Have you checked inside the box to make sure all of your connections are good?
Do your fans and other hardware seem to work ok?
What version of Windows are you using?

There are lots of reasons this may have happened and many of them are not disasters. Give us more info and we can give you more help.

Budfred

[Sylvander]

Budfred is spot on as usual but you might try this in addition:

If you can still boot to a floppy:

Go here
http://www.tufftest.com/tt01-lite.htm
and download a free copy of "TuffTest-Lite" to make a self booting, diagnostic diskette [its not comprehensive or sophisticated but it works].
Boot your PC with this in place and sit back and watch it test.
Press "enter" to skip any test.
It will only test part of your HDD, but if it can do that there's nothing wrong with your hardware and it will narrow the range of possible causes.

If you have even better diagnostic software on a floppy use that instead.

[ski]

Insert the Windows boot floppy, start the computer, select 'Start Without CD-ROM Support', press Enter, type sys c: at the A:\> prompt, press Enter, remove the boot floppy.

[vivekck]

This is in continuity to my earlier mail "Operating System not found !!"

To specify details of what I had on my comp previously.

Windows 98
McAfee Antivirus
All cables connecting Harddisk seems to be fine.

The problem occurred almost when 75% of the boot up was successful.

As suggested I had also tried the sys:c option which did not work.

[Budfred]

I remember seeing your other post, but it makes it real difficult to provide suggestions without being able to see what has already been happening. I would suggest that you Copy and Paste this message into the previous thread so that we know the full story and can give you more ideas. Generally it is a good idea to keep the same problem in one thread.

BTW, to do that, just click on Post Reply under the last message in the thread.

Budfred

[mjc]

One freebie.....I merged this one, but it is much better to continue with the original thread.

[no-mbr]

Does the BIOS report the drive correctly?
Usually, an "operating system not found" means the machine can't find a boot sector. But if FDISK does not report a drive you may be in deep doo-doo.... Or at least need a new drive....

[gopi_vs]

try the fdisk/mbr command. Also try connecting the hard-disk as a slave on another machine. If you can browse through the data on your hard disk, it is better that you back it up quickly!!!:(

[Sylvander]

I notice a couple of DOS commands with spaces not included.

"sys:c" should be "sys c:"
"fdisk/mbr" should be "fdisk /mbr"

QUOTES
From “The DOS Boot Process” at:
[http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/struct.htm]
7. “The volume boot code examines the structures on the disk that it is booting to ensure that everything is correct and in the right place. If not, the boot process will end in an error here as well.”
8. “The code searches the root directory of the device being booted for the operating system files that contain the operating system. For a system running MS-DOS these are the files "IO.SYS", "MSDOS.SYS" and "COMMAND.COM".”
9.”If the operating system files are not found, the boot program will display an error message, which is usually something like "Non-system disk or disk error - Replace and press any key when ready". Some people think that this message means the system was never booted, that the BIOS examined the floppy disk for example and just rejected it because it couldn't boot it. As you can see from this description of the boot process, the volume boot code was indeed loaded and executed, and in fact it is what prints the message when it can't find the operating system files.”

From “Boot Sector Viruses” at:
[http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/struct.htm]
“Many people think that when you boot a system from a floppy or hard disk that has no system files--because it was formatted without transferring them--that the system doesn't boot. It's worth pointing out that in truth, it does boot; the boot process just halts very quickly when no operating system files can be found. In fact, the error message "Non-system disk or disk error - Replace and press any key when ready", is printed by the volume boot code that is read from the volume boot sector on the disk.”
END OF QUOTES

The above suggests that “Ski” is right in telling you to use the “sys c:” command to put the system files back in place on the c: drive.

Some notes:

The
MASTER BOOT RECORD [MBR]
holds the
MASTER BOOT CODE (1)
which examines the
MASTER PARTITION TABLE
and searches for an
EXTENDED DOS PARTITION (2)
and a
BOOTABLE PARTITION [Primary Partition marked active] (3)
(1) loads the
EXTENDED PARTITION TABLE
for the first, then second, then third etc
LOGICAL VOLUMES
which are chained in sequence inside (2).
(1) then attempts to boot (3).