Image Drive Restored: Still Operating System Not Found

[Genie]

I recently got a black screen with "operating system not found" message. CD install disk says all (3) drives are healthy. Did a Ghost image restore and it said clone was successful but still getting "operating system not found" on reboot. It was suggested that I may need to reset bios to recognize the drive as the main operating (C) drive but I don't know how to do this. Can anyone tell me, please, in very basic terminology, ie; baby steps :-/
My setup is as follows:

Dell Dimension XPST600; WinXP Pro-SP2; 600Mhz Pent III; 512 Mb RAM

Thanks for any help,
Genie

[Quantax]

Before you even reset the BIOS, have you checked in the BIOS setup to see that the drive is recognized? It's NOT being recognized can be one reason for that error message.

[Genie]

Before you even reset the BIOS, have you checked in the BIOS setup to see that the drive is recognized? It's NOT being recognized can be one reason for that error message.

No, I'm not sure how to do that. Before I did the restore, I did a FIXBOOT and a FIXMBR and everything I've done so far in an attempt to fix things has recognized that there are 3 drives there, which probably doesn't mean a thing. I'm sorry, I really don't know a whole lot about the inner workings of a computer. This is my first computer and the first problem I've had with it in 5 years....

[saphalline]

This is my first computer and the first problem I've had with it in 5 years....Well, then you're definitely due to have some! :p Seriously, though, 5 straight years of no problems is d@mn good! Consider yourself lucky! On the other hand, your problems are probably just beginning. :(

Ok, let's start at the beginning. What maintenance have you done over the last 5 years? Have you ever opened it up and cleaned it out? Have you ever had to go into the BIOS before? (I can't remember how to get into a Dell BIOS off-hand... I think it's like F10 or F12...) Has this sucker been running 5 years straight or has Windows been reinstalled since then?

[hockey man]

Dell uses F2 I believe. F8 for boot up options.

[Quantax]

My Intel is F2 but Dell might be too. Compact is F10.

[Paul Komski]

Its possible that, for whatever reason, no partition is marked as active. Do you know how to mark a partition as active? BootItNG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com) and other partition managers can both check for and do this simple but vital thing.

[Genie]

Ok, let's start at the beginning. What maintenance have you done over the last 5 years? Have you ever opened it up and cleaned it out? Have you ever had to go into the BIOS before? Has this sucker been running 5 years straight or has Windows been reinstalled since then?

I, personally, have never done anything more than defrag my drives and backup my files. I knew someone who took on "side jobs". He installed my drives for me and this past April, he reformatted my computer, reinstalled XP, did the Ghost image and showed me how to restore the image, should it ever be needed. He's also cleaned it out whenever he's worked on it but I haven't been able to get in touch with him. I ran Belarc Advisor a couple of months ago and according to that report, my bios are Intel Corp. A11. I've never gone into the bios before but assuming I can press F2 or whatever, and get into them, then what should be my next step?

[Sylvander]

You might want to make this bootable floppy and if you have any difficulty resetting the boot order in the BIOS Setup, or if you just prefer to use this because its easier [I do], then just boot from it and choose [from the menu] the HDD [or any drive] you prefer [you could try them all in turn] to boot from.

How to make a “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498

[Genie]

Its possible that, for whatever reason, no partition is marked as active. Do you know how to mark a partition as active? BootItNG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com) and other partition managers can both check for and do this simple but vital thing.

No, I do not know how to mark a partition as active. I was hoping someone could tell me how to do that. I am a senior on a very modest budget and I don't have much extra money to spend. Can't this be done without having to purchase more software and/or programs?

[Paul Komski]

Grab BootIt-NG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html) which is fully functional trialware. Unzip the download and make the boot floppy or boot CD. Boot to whichever one you made.

On booting-up to the medium Cancel the first prompt to install it onto the hard drive and go into "Maintenance Mode". Then click on "Partition Work". Then click the "View MBR" button on the left.

Up to four lines for up to four partition tables should be visible. The partition that you wish to boot should be marked as active. If it is not then highlight it and hit the "Set Active" button. Then Apply, Close and Reboot.

[alex666]

All these recommendations can be a bit overwhelming. The simplest first step here is to go into your computer and make sure that it is set to boot from whichever hard drive (hdd) has your operating system (OS). On my wife's Dell, it tells you what key to tap: look at the upper right hand corner of your screen as your computer starts; it will tell you to tap the F2 key to get into the bios, and tap the F12 key to get to your boot order menu. Choose the latter, and then select the hdd that has your OS. On my wife's Dell, you also are given the "normal" boot option, which follows the factory-set boot order. I'm not sure what order of drive (floppy, cd, hdd) this follows, but if you have more than one hdd in your computer, simply choosing "normal" might be a problem. Anyway, if you continue to get the "No OS found" message, post back here and we can take it from there. Also, could you please list how many hdds you have inside your computer, and whether one of them is a backup hdd.

marty

[Genie]

Grab BootIt-NG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html) which is fully functional trialware. Unzip the download and make the boot floppy or boot CD. Boot to whichever one you made.

On booting-up to the medium Cancel the first prompt to install it onto the hard drive and go into "Maintenance Mode". Then click on "Partition Work". Then click the "View MBR" button on the left.

Up to four lines for up to four partition tables should be visible. The partition that you wish to boot should be marked as active. If it is not then highlight it and hit the "Set Active" button. Then Apply, Close and Reboot.

OK, I did this and the drive was marked as active :(

[Genie]

All these recommendations can be a bit overwhelming. The simplest first step here is to go into your computer and make sure that it is set to boot from whichever hard drive (hdd) has your operating system (OS). On my wife's Dell, it tells you what key to tap: look at the upper right hand corner of your screen as your computer starts; it will tell you to tap the F2 key to get into the bios, and tap the F12 key to get to your boot order menu. Choose the latter, and then select the hdd that has your OS. On my wife's Dell, you also are given the "normal" boot option, which follows the factory-set boot order. I'm not sure what order of drive (floppy, cd, hdd) this follows, but if you have more than one hdd in your computer, simply choosing "normal" might be a problem. Anyway, if you continue to get the "No OS found" message, post back here and we can take it from there. Also, could you please list how many hdds you have inside your computer, and whether one of them is a backup hdd.

marty

OK, all it says is to hit ctrl Alt B, which takes me into the MBR configuration. There are 5 items listed;

Boot Method: PXE (with a prompt)
Config Message: Enabled
Message Timeout: 3 seconds
Boot Failure Prompt: Wait for timeout
Boot Failure: Next BBS device

This all started when I left my computer defragging overnight, using Diskeeper. When I got up the next morning, I had the black screen.with "Operating system not found"
My friend did the Image on my computer when he reformatted, using Ghost 7.5. He gave me a "create" floppy and a "restore" floppy and the image was burned to a dvd. This is waht I used to do the "restore" but it definately did say "clone" was successful.
I have 3 harddrives. The C is my operating system, 40 gig; the D is for data, 60 gig and the E is also for data, 200 gig and no, none of them are for backups. I backup my data to dvds.

[Genie]

OK, all it says is to hit ctrl Alt B, which takes me into the MBR configuration. There are 5 items listed;

Boot Method: PXE (with a prompt)
Config Message: Enabled
Message Timeout: 3 seconds
Boot Failure Prompt: Wait for timeout
Boot Failure: Next BBS device

This all started when I left my computer defragging overnight, using Diskeeper. When I got up the next morning, I had the black screen.with "Operating system not found"
My friend did the Image on my computer when he reformatted, using Ghost 7.5. He gave me a "create" floppy and a "restore" floppy and the image was burned to a dvd. This is waht I used to do the "restore" but it definately did say "clone" was successful.
I have 3 harddrives. The C is my operating system, 40 gig; the D is for data, 60 gig and the E is also for data, 200 gig and no, none of them are for backups. I backup my data to dvds.

Now, I can hit <del> on bootup and get into the setup menus which are Main, Advanced, Security, Power, Boot, and Exit and all of these have sub-menues. Under "Boot" it has

"1st Boot Device"; Removable devices
"2nd boot device"; ATAPI CD_ROM Drive
"3rd Boot Device"; Hard Drive
"4th Boot Device"; Network Boot
"5th Boot Device"; MBA UNDI
(These 5 can be moved up or down in their order) then

"Hard Drive"
"Removable Devices"

If I highlight "Hard Drive", it says "The system will attempt to boot to the operating system from the first hard drive in this list. If no operating system is found, the system will try the nest drive listed until an operating system is found."

Just wondering if a clean install of XP wouldn't get me to a point where I could then restore from the image???

[alex666]

So let's see if I've got the sequence of events straight: after using diskeeper overnight, you woke up to "No OS found" (diskeeper must have rebooted after completing its defrag). So you used the backup dvd you created to restore the drive, got the "successful clone" message, but now upon booting, you get the "no OS found" message. Is that the correct sequence of events. And that's where you are now?

Edit: now I just read your most recent post. Do you have any removable disks attached or any disks in your optical drive?

marty

[Genie]

So let's see if I've got the sequence of events straight: after using diskeeper overnight, you woke up to "No OS found" (diskeeper must have rebooted after completing its defrag). So you used the backup dvd you created to restore the drive, got the "successful clone" message, but now upon booting, you get the "no OS found" message. Is that the correct sequence of events. And that's where you are now?

Edit: now I just read your most recent post. Do you have any removable disks attached or any disks in your optical drive?

marty

Well, I just now put the WinXP w/SP2 cd in and went into Winternals, cancelled that to get into dos and did a directory of A:\ which it did but when I try to go to any of the other drives, C:\ D:\ or E:\ it says "Invalid drive specified"
Prior to this, no, I didn't have anything in the cd-rom or the floppy, and yes, that is pretty much the sequence of events except that Diskeeper doesn't usually reboot upon completion. I usually just see the screen in the morning telling me that it's done and what the results were. I don't know if there was a power blip during the night or what to make it reboot.

edit; Actually, the cord for my digital camera and scanner are connected but neither is attached to their cords. I also did a FIXBOOT and a FIXMBR before I tried the recover Image.

[alex666]

Okay. Yeah, something weird happened with diskeeper. Okay, now if you go into your bios, does your bios see your three hdds? It's weird that your windows OS disk with sp2 does not see your hdds. I wonder what's up with that. So you want to see if your bios sees the hdds. A step at a time here.

marty

[Genie]

Okay. Yeah, something weird happened with diskeeper. Okay, now if you go into your bios, does your bios see your three hdds? It's weird that your windows OS disk with sp2 does not see your hdds. I wonder what's up with that. So you want to see if your bios sees the hdds. A step at a time here.

marty

Problem is, I still don't know how to access my bios. I tried F2 and ctrl/alt/B but neither of those brought up the bios. On the Setup menu, all the drives are visible. Should I just start with F1 and work my way across in hopes I get lucky???

[Sylvander]

Are these "drives" [C: D: E:] 3 physical HDD, or are they "virtual" or "logical" "drives" [actually partitions on one physical HDD]?

If you would like to browse these "drives" to view the contents [to see whether Windows (its folders and files) is there or not], then use the "File Manager" on this bootable CD. You boot from this CD [choosing to boot from it using the "Smart Boot Manager" shown previously] and run the "File Manager".
How to make an EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
[Look at the bottom of this thread for details of how to Do some things with "File Manager".]
The "Image" program on [the 2nd menu on] this CD will restore an image to any partition you choose, the "File Manager" will allow you to see that the files thus restored are indeed on the partition [or not].

[Genie]

Problem is, I still don't know how to access my bios. I tried F2 and ctrl/alt/B but neither of those brought up the bios. On the Setup menu, all the drives are visible. Should I just start with F1 and work my way across in hopes I get lucky???

I just went to the Dell site and for the Dimension series it says to press <del> which brings me into the setup menus described previously.

[Genie]

Are these "drives" [C: D: E:] 3 physical HDD, or are they "virtual" or "logical" "drives" [actually partitions on one physical HDD]?

If you would like to browse these "drives" to view the contents [to see whether Windows (its folders and files) is there or not], then use the "File Manager" on this bootable CD. You boot from this CD [choosing to boot from it using the "Smart Boot Manager" shown previously] and run the "File Manager".
How to make an EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
[Look at the bottom of this thread for details of how to Do some things with "File Manager".]
The "Image" program on [the 2nd menu on] this CD will restore an image to any partition you choose, the "File Manager" will allow you to see that the files thus restored are indeed on the partition [or not].

They are 3 physical drives, not 1 drive that has been partitioned. I can't make the cd you suggest as the computer I'm using for these communications does not have a cd or dvd burner installed in it :( When my DH returns home this evening, he can probably install my old cd burner in this (his) machine which he was going to do anyway, just never got around to doing it and then I can burn the suggested cd at that time.

[Sylvander]

"Invalid drive specified"
Means that the PC is unaware of the existence of a drive with that letter.

Are your drives all set to auto-detect in the BIOS setup, so that the drive parameters are all correctly specified?

[Genie]

I just went to the Dell site and for the Dimension series it says to press <del> which brings me into the setup menus described previously.

OK, if I go into the BOOT option in the Setup menu and go down to Hard Drive, I can bring up a submenu with 4 items, as follows:

1. [Bootable Add-in Card]
2. [ST 3200822A-(SS)]
3.[WDC WD400BB-00AUA1-PM]
4. [WDC WD600BB-00CAA1-PS]

So it is showing my OS drive (#3) and my 60 gig (#4) but not my 200 gig drive....

[alex666]

I just went to the Dell site and for the Dimension series it says to press <del> which brings me into the setup menus described previously.

Okay, then hit <del>, then go into either main or advanced and see if your bios is reading your hdds. You should get a listing of your two ide channels, with a master and slave on each, and what drives are attached (or however the dell bios presents it).

Okay, I read your last post (you're quick). I don't know, but you may have only 4 boot options in the boot menu, so it would not necessarily read all your hdds.
But obviously it is reading your OS hdd. So why isn't the Windows OS install CD? Hmm. I'd still be curious to see what your bios is reading on your two ide channels. But now the task is to see if you can set up your boot setup in such a way that it will boot from your OS hdd. I've got to wonder if it's trying to boot from one of the other hdds.

[Genie]

Okay. Yeah, something weird happened with diskeeper. Okay, now if you go into your bios, does your bios see your three hdds? It's weird that your windows OS disk with sp2 does not see your hdds. I wonder what's up with that. So you want to see if your bios sees the hdds. A step at a time here.

marty

Please see my latest post about the Boot order. I guess I'm doing this all wrong by replying to myself with added information instead of replying directly yo you....sorry, this is all new to me and a bit confusing. Try to hang in there with me, please :-|

[alex666]

Try to hang in there with me

Will do. Things could always be worse: your nickname could be Scooter.

I added to my last posting. Need to figure out which hdd your system is trying to boot from. If worse comes to worse, one way to simplify is to pull out the non-OS hdds to help isolate the problem.

[Genie]

I just went to the Dell site and for the Dimension series it says to press <del> which brings me into the setup menus described previously.

Okay, then hit <del>, then go into either main or advanced and see if your bios is reading your hdds. You should get a listing of your two ide channels, with a master and slave on each, and what drives are attached (or however the dell bios presents it).

Okay, I read your last post (you're quick). I don't know, but you may have only 4 boot options in the boot menu, so it would not necessarily read all your hdds.
But obviously it is reading your OS hdd. So why isn't the Windows OS install CD? Hmm. I'd still be curious to see what your bios is reading on your two ide channels. But now the task is to see if you can set up your boot setup in such a way that it will boot from your OS hdd. I've got to wonder if it's trying to boot from one of the other hdds.

Under "Advanced" is the IDE Configuration
IDE controller: [Both]

Primary IDE Master [WDC WD400BB-00AUA1-(PM)]
Primary IDE Slave [WDC WD 600BB-00CAA1-(PS)]
Secondary IDE Master [Memorex DVD+/-DLRWL1 F16-]
Secondary IDE Slave [ST 3200822A-(ss)]

[Sylvander]

Killdisk = www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm [free]

This bootable floppy will display [rather nicely] any partitions [even if only one] on the Primary master HDD [if detected] together with lots of pertinent drive info.
Its main function is to zero-fill, either the whole drive or selected individual partitions.
If it shows all of this you'll know there isn't anything too badly wrong with that HDD.

[Genie]

"Invalid drive specified"
Means that the PC is unaware of the existence of a drive with that letter.

Are your drives all set to auto-detect in the BIOS setup, so that the drive parameters are all correctly specified?

I'm not seeing anything in any of the menus or sub-menus to set this option but the OS drive does seem to be being detected.

[alex666]

Secondary IDE Slave [ST 3200822A-(ss)]

What is that? If not your 3rd hdd, how exactly is that 3rd hdd attached?

In any case, your bios is reading the OS drive. So in that boot menu, if you set it to boot only to that drive, and you still get "No OS", you might consider using that Ghost Image program via your floppy drive and see if somehow your boot drive (which is one partition) is hidden. Drive Image programs can do this. I can't imagine it is, but it's worth checking, because it's easily remedied. If not, then you'll probably want to download a program like Sylvander is suggesting that will check out the integrity of the drive. Plus, whoever manufactured the drive has downloadable software to also check out drive integrity. Plus, as I suggested earlier, if I was in your shoes, I'd pull out the non-OS hdds and have only the OS hdd in there, just to keep things simple. Good luck.

marty

[Genie]

Secondary IDE Slave [ST 3200822A-(ss)]

What is that? If not your 3rd hdd, how exactly is that 3rd hdd attached?

In any case, your bios is reading the OS drive. So in that boot menu, if you set it to boot only to that drive, and you still get "No OS", you might consider using that Ghost Image program via your floppy drive and see if somehow your boot drive (which is one partition) is hidden. Drive Image programs can do this. I can't imagine it is, but it's worth checking, because it's easily remedied. If not, then you'll probably want to download a program like Sylvander is suggesting that will check out the integrity of the drive. Plus, whoever manufactured the drive has downloadable software to also check out drive integrity. Plus, as I suggested earlier, if I was in your shoes, I'd pull out the non-OS hdds and have only the OS hdd in there, just to keep things simple. Good luck.

marty

Yes, I guess it is my 3rd drive. I was thinking they were all WD but I just found the box and it is a Seagate and the model # matches....
Thanks for all the help from everyone. I'll keep you posted when I'm able to try something else suggested. Your efforts were very much appreciated!

[Sylvander]

Seatools Desktop Edition = www.seagate.com/support/seatools/seatoold_reg.html [free]

This bootable floppy will test your HDD's.
Oops, that's where I got my copy, but I cannot get through at that web address. I'll see if I can find a new address.
Here's one http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/SeaTools-Desktop-Download-1209.html

Sorry about this, looks like it's no longer available.

[Genie]

Seatools Desktop Edition = www.seagate.com/support/seatools/seatoold_reg.html [free]

This bootable floppy will test your HDD's.
Oops, that's where I got my copy, but I cannot get through at that web address. I'll see if I can find a new address.
Here's one http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/SeaTools-Desktop-Download-1209.html

Sorry about this, looks like it's no longer available.

It's OK...I found a drive Integrety Testing floppy d/l at the Western Digital site. I did a quick test and it came back with read errors and recommended I run a full media scan, which I'm doing now. It also has the same option as the Killfile, should I need to do that. Thank you so very much for your efforts. I'll keep you all posted :confused:

[alex666]

The worst case scenario should be that you'd have to reinstall windows, which can be a pain, especially if you don't have fast internet (downloading all the updates over dial-up is very tedious). However, you should be able to use that restore disk, assuming that your hdd is working correctly. If the drive is dead, but you've got the restore disk, I mean new hdds fortunately are not all that expensive, you could always just get a new and perhaps better drive. I installed a new hdd into my wife's dell and it definitely runs better.

Bet you never use diskeeper again. I used it once, years back, and never used it again, it slowed my system down and it took forever to "re-defrag" my drive using the windows defrag utility.

[Paul Komski]

Boot Method: PXE
That is the setting for network and not local booting.

Can you (a) change this, (b) possibly detach the two data drives temporarily to take them out of the equation altogether and (c) make the HDD the first boot device in the boot order.

You seem to have a system with all drives recognised but with bootstrap code that is not being directed to a bootable partition. If you can get all the configurations correct then are you sure you did restore the clone of a system partition and not one of a data partition?

[Genie]

Killdisk = www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm [free]

This bootable floppy will display [rather nicely] any partitions [even if only one] on the Primary master HDD [if detected] together with lots of pertinent drive info.
Its main function is to zero-fill, either the whole drive or selected individual partitions.
If it shows all of this you'll know there isn't anything too badly wrong with that HDD.

I ran the Western Digital test and it stopped with 8 minutes left in the process. Wouldn''t go any farther. Then I ran this Killdisk floppy and it says, "Cannot load dos" so I'm going to disconnect the 2 data drives and completely erase the C drive and start again in the morning trying to restore either the Image or a clean Windows install. I'm thinking more and more that I'm dealing with a HDD failure. At this point anything I find out for certain will be welcomed. Thank you for your help. I've learned a lot from this experience and gone places I was never comfortable going. You and the others have indeed, taught this old dog some new tricks and I'm very appreciative :)

[alex666]

Hey, I'll be 55 in 3 weeks. We're never too old. I built my first system when I was 51 and "got the bug" doing exactly what you are doing, adding a hdd, trouble-shooting, stuff like that. In fact, as I learned to upgrade and maintain a Compaq computer we had purchased, I realized that perhaps building my own system might not be that hard. I've subsequently learned that self-builds actually are a lot easier to maintain vs. proprietary systems like Dell. I have more trouble with my wife's Dell than any of the 4 systems I've built. Plus it's a lot of fun. When a system you've built comes to life, especially the first one, it's a great feeling.

Good luck and please post back with how things turn out. Take care.

marty

[Genie]

You all aren't going to believe what has happened. When my DH got home I asked him to disconnect the 2 data drives (D and E) so I could erase the C drive. He disconnected them and when he plugged it back in, Windows started up!!! I never knew he had THAT much magic in his touch...lol! Anyway, he reconnected the 2 data drives and we rebooted and now my E drive seems to be missing. My C drive is fine; my cd/dvd burner is now my D drive and what was my D drive is now my E drive and my 200 gig former E drive is not being recognized. It is listed in the hardware configuration and says it's working properly.....I just can't see it or access it, apparently, hahahaha!! This computer is driving me insane!!! I'm teetering on the edge....please help me find my E drive before I jump :-)

[alex666]

Well, glad the OS drive is working. So the restore did indeed work. I'd still wonder if that "missing drive" has been "hidden" somehow by your ghost program. Either that, or your bios is not auto-detecting it. Probably the latter. Anyway, you've got an OS that's working. That's a good way to end the evening. Good night Gracie.

marty

[Paul Komski]

See if you can see the E drive in the Disk Manager (enter diskmgmt.msc into the run box). Its possible it just needs to be given a drive letter there. You can also change the drive letters for volumes (other than system volumes) should you so desire.

[Sylvander]

This 3rd drive [200 GB] is the only one that exceeds the 137 GB HDD limit [48 bit Logical Block Addressing needed].

Could that be significant?

[Paul Komski]

Could that be significant?
It could - but we are told that the system is WinXP Pro-SP2 and the drive was seen previously. If the ghosted image was pre SP1 then that would be significant. RClick MyComputer and Properties will show which version of WinXP Pro is running.

[Genie]

I took a chance and reinstalled my Ghost image this morning and when I rebooted, my E drive was back and all my drives have the correct letters. All I can figure is that something wasn't seated just right during the 1st restore and it didn't "take" properly, perhaps causing all of the problems I had afterwards.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you who responded to my plight(s). You are all angels in my eyes and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me.

Eternally grateful,
Genie

[Sylvander]

SUPERB ! :D :cool:

[alex666]

Great news. So when do you plan on building your first system?

marty