Operating System Not Found

There are a few things that can cause the dreaded Operating System Not Found error at boot: There is a disk in the floppy drive that is not bootable, there is a problem with the boot partition on the hard drive, or the hard drive has failed. We are assuming there are no configuration errors, that the drives are installed and jumpered properly. If you’re unsure of how to do this, please join our forums and ask.

Check the BIOS

Once you have confirmed there are no floppies or CDs in the drives that the system might be trying to boot to, get into the computer’s BIOS to make sure the hard drive is being detected. The key you’ll press will vary from computer to computer, but these are normally either ESC, F1, F2, F10 or Delete. Tap these keys continuously when first powering up the PC.

Once in the BIOS, look for the Primary Master. There should be a hard drive listed here. If not, we may have a problem with the hard drive. Open the case, and look for the hard disk. It’s normally located under the CD drives. Make sure the IDE cable is secure (flat ribbon cable) and that it has a good power connection. The power cable is a white D-shaped dongle with four wires. If everything is connected, you should look into replacing the drive.

If the drive DOES show up in the BIOS, we’ll need to fix the Master Boot Record (MBR). In XP, you can boot to the XP CD and enter the recovery console. Once there, type fixmbr and hit enter. Reboot. If this doesn’t help, you may want to go ahead and reinstall the Operating System.

If you have any questions, please feel free to join our message board.