Missing Operating System

[flyboycjs]

I tried to start up my computer this morning and received the above message

Any one have an idea what may have happened. I dont want to have to re install windows again, that would be a pain in the a#$.

Could this be a hard disk fail?

Any help would be great.

[Timmo]

Hmm sounds like it could be- Is the harddrive making any funny noises?

Before you get too carried away, I'm going to go ahead and say this: Have you tried to restart it a couple of times? While the harddrive may well be on its way out, sometimes these things just clear themselves once or twice....enough to get all your documents onto a external HDD.

[flyboycjs]

QUOTE (Timmo @ Nov 24 2012,3:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmm sounds like it could be- Is the harddrive making any funny noises?

Before you get too carried away, I'm going to go ahead and say this: Have you tried to restart it a couple of times? While the harddrive may well be on its way out, sometimes these things just clear themselves once or twice....enough to get all your documents onto a external HDD.

Yes about 10 times. The hard drive sounds fine as well.

[dbcunnz]

QUOTE (flyboycjs @ Nov 24 2012,3:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes about 10 times. The hard drive sounds fine as well.

Try a new cable from the MB to the HDD or if it is a SATA you can also try another cable slot from the MB
I use a program called Hard Disk Sentinel to check for problems on HDDs it lets you know if there are bad sectors and where they are on the HDD it will overwrite bad sectors even let you know if it is the SATA cable that is faulty

[Ian Warren]

At least its not like one other i knew of .. deleting Dll'd and other sorts of require files exe. the types then wonders why it won't start ...

you could always quietly put the OS CD in and follow the instructions , if it is a bad sector it should tell you some files are missing , this will confirm the HD is packing a sad .

[flyboycjs]

QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Nov 24 2012,4:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

At least its not like one other i knew of .. deleting Dll'd and other sorts of require files exe. the types then wonders why it won't start ...

you could always quietly put the OS CD in and follow the instructions , if it is a bad sector it should tell you some files are missing , this will confirm the HD is packing a sad .

Yes Ian this is one of the first things i tried. Repair was a no go. Looks like a trip down to the computer shop for me.

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (flyboycjs @ Nov 25 2012,9:56 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes Ian this is one of the first things i tried. Repair was a no go. Looks like a trip down to the computer shop for me.

Doug and i discussed this last night , he mentioned simply having a bad connecting slot on the mobo, one that failed a long while back plugged it into a secondary and has worked ever since , another option .

[IslandBoy77]

Hi. I tried to post this last night but kept getting a server error. I tried again this morning with the same results. There are 3 paragraphs - I'm going to try posting them 1 at a time to see which one the server is choking on.

A first step is to boot into the BIOS & make sure the motherboard is seeing the main hard drive (if you've got 2, make sure both are showing up). If you've got 2 hard drives, make sure the motherboard hasn't decided to boot off the 2nd drive just for a laugh - seen that a few times. If this is the case, just swap the boot sequence over in the BIOS. You may be experiencing a CMOS battery that is going flat if this is true, so it would pay to change it. Also make sure you've got no flash drive in any of the USB ports or external hard drives, and no CDs / DVDs in the tray.

If none of those things work, your next step is to boot to an XP or Vista or 7 boot disc or diagnostic CD or DVD and do a repair scan. In the old XP days one used to be able to do a full chkdsk via the recovery boot option which was great - Vista and 7 have the equivalent if you make your way to a command prompt via the boot or diagnostic disc - do a full scan using chkdsk with the /p option at the end and a space in between. If things still aren't working the next step is to try something like the UBCD (current version 5.1) to do an extended scan of the main hard drive to make sure there are no errors.

Unfortunately neither Vista or 7 allow for a proper repair install in order to fix a wobbly system (unless you purchased an upgrade license with attendant media), and I've chased these sorts of problems around many a time only to end up with a reformat / reload. Of course you should be able to get your data off via another computer if it's not magnetically damaged, and I would strongly recommend a low-level format if you have to go this way (using either the Western Digital or Seagate tools on the UBCD).

All the best - these sorts of things can really put a kink in your day..

[gdavies]

Does the BIOS recognise the disk? If not, then the problem is likely to be hardware related. Try reseating cables, check power is getting to the disk, etc. If the disk really is dead, then there's not a lot that you can do. Having said that, disks don't usually just die unless there was some sort of external cause (power spike, it was dropped, etc).

If the BIOS can see the disk, then the problem sounds like it's very early in the boot process (Windows gives more specific errors once it has control). A problem with the MBR on the disk could cause the sort of thing you are getting. There are utilities like SpinRite (www.grc.com) that can help in this case. I have a copy and could lead it to you on the proviso you purchase your own copy if it fixes the problem. PM me if you want to try that option.

You could try a chkdsk, but I'm not sure you do that in your circumstances. Perhaps you can do this using the repair disk? Chkdsk verifies the integrity of the filesystem. I'm picking that's not the issue here.

Graeme

[flyboycjs]

Got it fixed today by a mate who knows a lot more about computers than i do. All it was was a setting in the BIOS. Took him all off 2 min to fix.

I wish i new more about this type of thing.

Thanks for all your guys help any way.

[Dean]

For the record, and for future reference... I had this exact same problem a while ago after I made some parts upgrades...
The problem was I forgot to hook up the SATA Data Cable back onto the drive that had the OS (I have 6 hard drives in the PC and happened to miss hooking up the OS drive!)
Took me a few hours to figure it out!

[IslandBoy77]

The most common occurrence I've seen of this is the BIOS simply choosing to select a 2nd hard drive in a multi-HDD system which has no OS. Generally, I've found it to be a CMOS battery going flat, but it could also be an actual motherboard / cable / HDD fault (maybe even something weird with the PSU during startup). However, each time I've encountered it, replacing the battery & reselecting the correct HDD has resulted in an immediate fix. I'm glad to hear that the problem for Craig was easily fixed - no one likes a format / reinstall, not even us techies...