Operating System Not Found

[am_singh]

I just bought a new laptop which was supposedly installed with windows 2000 but when i turned it on, it came up with a black screen and the words "Operating system not found." Does this mean the operating system was not installed or something else? I don't know what to do. Do I have to buy an operating system disk, or can i download and burn something onto cd using another computer? Thanks for any help.

[Quantax]

The OS may actually be on there but it isn't accessible based on that message. Can you access Safe mode by restarting then tapping the F8 key and see if the drive's located in "My Computer". Then right click and see if it'll provide any information(like the amount of disk space used).

[Sylvander]

"Operating system not found" may only mean that the DOS files cannot be found.
To fix that, boot to a bootable Win2000 floppy and a:\>sys a: c: to transfer the DOS system files from the floppy to the HDD.
That should at the very least give you a DOS prompt when you boot to the HDD.

[Paul Komski]

Do not sys anything since this is Win2K and you don't want to overwrite the boot sector with a DOS/Win9X one. You could try Fdisk from a Win9X boot floppy and just use option 4 to view the HDD structure. Dont delete any partitions with FDisk but if no partition is marked as active do use it to make the primary partition active.

"Operating system not found" indicates that the bios cannot find a valid and bootable boot sector. Check the BIOS set up that the HDD is recognised there and that the boot sequence is correct. Maybe also run the HDD maker's diagnostics on the drive since a failing drive can also result in this message.

[am_singh]

Thanks for your help. I tried safe mode but nothing happens, it just says operating system not found. Also, there is no floppy drive. I have a USB floppy drive but i tried a boot-up disk and it never read it or anything. Can I use a CD for the fdisk? If so, how do I go about doing this. Thanks again.

[Paul Komski]

I have a USB floppy drive but i tried a boot-up disk and it never read it or anything.
Does the BIOS have a setting to enable booting from a USB floppy?
Does the HDD show up in the BIOS while you are in there?

If you have Nero or similar you can use a boot floppy image to burn a CD using floppy emulation; that boot CD will then behave as if it is a boot floppy. You can get the image file zipped up from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm by downloading the Win98E image under the "Non-Windows Based Image Files W/ImageApp" section.

Fdisk comes with a Win9X installation CD but not with the Win2K one. Not all Win9X CDs are bootable.

[Sylvander]

There is a copy of fdisk [and many others] on the free bootable "Emergency Boot CD" [EBCD] made by downloading [the 17,155kB Pro version of] "ebcd-0,6,1-pro-sfx.exe" from http://ebcd.pcministry.com/ , unpacking the archive, running "makeebcd.exe" to make "ebcd061p.iso" and using Nero [or similar] to "File->Create CD...".

[Paul Komski]

I neglected to say that even if you cannot boot to your USB floppy drive you can still use it to access a physical boot floppy diskette and very simply create a boot floppy CD. There are instructions at http://www.bootdisk.com/nero.htm for Nero and if you have Nero Express just follow the wizard. Other software should be similar if slightly different.