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Premb
08-16-2006, 06:22 PM
Hi
A few days back I ran a cell-phone related applications and it installed 2-3 new drivers. I did not

have to restart my system but windows created a restore point. The applications worked fine. Late

that evening, I restarted my laptop and while it was shutting down, I happened to remove a USB wire

that was connected to my laptop (USB wire to download pics from a digital camera). The windows

could not start from that point onwards. When I power ON its gives me the screen with 'COMPAQ'

printed on it for a minute or two and then a blank screen with error 'Operating system not found'.

I cannot hear any noise (fan, spinning, cycle) for the HD is initiated. Also when I went into BOIS

setup (PhoneixBIOS setup) I have only 3 tabs - Main, Boot and Exit. Under MAIN, I do not see any

hard drive listed (primary, master, slave etc). Under BOOT, I have removable media on the top and

HARD Drive on the bottom. I did a 'Load Default', verified that all drives were empty and removed

all external connections (external Hard drive and external DVD writer) but still it gave me the

same error on start up.
This morning when I went into BIOS and under BOOT I changed the order to have Hard Drive first

(previously I had removable drive, CD drive and then hard drive). The system boots fine and

everything seemed to be resolved.

But then when loading some applications (default on start up like Nortan anti virus, firewall
Etc) the system hanged-up (I was also connecting the USB cable at this point of time -
The same USB cables for camera that I had removed while shutdown earlier when the HD failed on

re-start).

I restarted the system and back to the same error - 'Operating system not found'. I did some more

experiments with the BIOS in changing the ORDER of boot having different
Drives on the top and then save-exit, power-cycle and start but it keeps on having the same error

'Operating System Not Found'

On entering BIOS I get the following
CPQ Presario 2700 BIOS version HJ1 Q0f0f0
CPU = Intel (R) Pentium (R) III-M 1133Mhz
640 K system Ram Passes
510 M Extended Ram Passed
System BIOS Shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
UMB upper limit segment address: E631
ATAPI CD-ROM: SR-C8102
Mouse initialized

Entering setup..

This is a Compaq Presario 2710US Notebook.
Processor: 1.13 GHz Intel Pentium III
Number of Processors: 1
RAM: 512 MB
RAM Type: SDRAM
Hard Drive: 20 GB
CD-RW: 8x (write)
DVD-ROM: 8x
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
Bundled Software: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, America Online, Microsoft Encarta Online Deluxe

Encyclopedia - 1 year subscription, Microsoft Works 6.0, Microsoft Money 2001, Norton Anti-Virus,

Microsoft Media Player 7, Roxon Easy CD Creator 5.01, Studio DV, Interview Winded 3.0
Display Viewable Size: active-matrix
Display Viewable Size: 15 inches
Weight: 7.9 pounds

I need to get some data restored from this HD (or the entire HD working preferably)