Missing Operating System

[Alan]

Hi,
HP machine with XP Pro and SP2 installed.
All of a sudden I got a new hard disc installed for no apparent reason. It
was drive D and was called HP Recovery, the machine was working fine however
with this new addition.
I wont bore you with the long and involved details, but an attempt was made
to delete this drive using as far as I know 'Disc Management'
This resulted in initially a black screen announcing a disc partition fault
and after a while a message 'Missing Operating System', insert system disc
and press any key.
I don't know much about these things although I did once use a floppy boot
disc to recover Windows 98.
What is this system disc and how can I get one for Windows XP Pro?, as far
as I know nothing other than the HP Recovery disc has been deleted. Can it
be recovered or should I just give it up?
Regards,
Alan.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

[snip]

I wont bore you with the long and involved details, but an attempt was made
to delete this drive using as far as I know 'Disc Management'
[snip]

What is this system disc and how can I get one for Windows XP Pro?, as far
as I know nothing other than the HP Recovery disc has been deleted. Can it
be recovered or should I just give it up?

Give up.

That "HP Recovery disc" was your lifeline.

 

[Alan]

I thought as much. I do have Windows XP Pro and SP2 on CD's, not being very
au fait with these things I tend to copy everything onto CD's and keep them.
Is there any way of starting it back up from scratch? I know all my files
will be lost but better that than throwing the machine away, and anyway
almost of the stuff I want to keep is also backed up on CD.
I don't know how to do anything on a machine with a blank screen, BIOS and
suchlike is a mystery to me although I've heard the terms. It's not worth me
paying an expert to fix it for me for big bucks per hour as the machine is a
few years old and I think that cash would be better put towards a new one.
Regards,
Alan.

[snip]

I wont bore you with the long and involved details, but an attempt was
made
to delete this drive using as far as I know 'Disc Management'
[snip]

What is this system disc and how can I get one for Windows XP Pro?, as far
as I know nothing other than the HP Recovery disc has been deleted. Can it
be recovered or should I just give it up?

Give up.

That "HP Recovery disc" was your lifeline.

 

[cornedbeef007-groups]

I thought as much. I do have Windows XP Pro and SP2 on CD's, not being very
au fait with these things I tend to copy everything onto CD's and keep them.
Is there any way of starting it back up from scratch? I know all my files
will be lost but better that than throwing the machine away, and anyway
almost of the stuff I want to keep is also backed up on CD.
I don't know how to do anything on a machine with a blank screen, BIOS and
suchlike is a mystery to me although I've heard the terms. It's not worth me
paying an expert to fix it for me for big bucks per hour as the machine is a
few years old and I think that cash would be better put towards a new one.
Regards,
Alan

Put Windows XP Pro disk in the CD drive and boot the machine from it.
You might have to change the boot order in BIOS to make it find the CD
rom.

It will offer to install WinXP for you, but it WILL ask for the
license key (on the COA sticker on your machine!)
It's stuffed now, so you've got nuthin' to lose.

Good luck.
BarryG

 

[Alan]

Thanks for that, how do I get to BIOS to change the boot order?

 

[Guest]

So, some gremlin, came in the night and installed a new partition, and then
wiped it for you, how lucky.
Then he came back and not only erased your recovery partition, but the
operating system as well, man how unlucky!

Please don't bore us with the suddenous of it all, just get someone who
knows what the heck they are doing, before you lift a finger towards your pc
again, and have them look at it.

Before you delete anything, you need to understand what it is and how it
relates to your pc and operating system.

 

[Alan]

How the partition arrived I don't know, the gremlin that deleted it was
someone I know who claimed he knew what he was doing.
Why do you bother replying in such a sarcastic and ridiculous way? It
doesn't help me or you.
Your deep and profound advice not to mess with things you don't understand
puts you on a par with Solomon. I didn't realise until you informed me that
one shouldn't go through ones operating system deleting files at random I'm
grateful and humbled to have been graced to be in the presence of such
wisdom, I am not worthy.
Regards,
Alan.

 

[cornedbeef007-groups]

Thanks for that, how do I get to BIOS to change the boot order?

Alan,

You may not have to change anything.
Just power on the machine, and insert the CDrom in the drive. Then
reboot. It will probably boot up to the CDrom anyway.

Give it a try! You ain't got nuthin' to lose.


Good luck.

 

[Alan]

Thanks, I will,
Alan.

Alan,

You may not have to change anything.
Just power on the machine, and insert the CDrom in the drive. Then
reboot. It will probably boot up to the CDrom anyway.

Give it a try! You ain't got nuthin' to lose.


Good luck.

 

[Guest]

Your brief post left plenty out, yeah I know you said left out the boring
details, so nuff said.

 

[Rock]

Hi,
HP machine with XP Pro and SP2 installed.
All of a sudden I got a new hard disc installed for no apparent reason. It
was drive D and was called HP Recovery, the machine was working fine
however with this new addition.
I wont bore you with the long and involved details, but an attempt was
made to delete this drive using as far as I know 'Disc Management'
This resulted in initially a black screen announcing a disc partition
fault and after a while a message 'Missing Operating System', insert
system disc and press any key.
I don't know much about these things although I did once use a floppy boot
disc to recover Windows 98.
What is this system disc and how can I get one for Windows XP Pro?, as far
as I know nothing other than the HP Recovery disc has been deleted. Can it
be recovered or should I just give it up?

Contact HP tech support for help in restoring the damage. The set up is
done by HP so they are the best source of info on it. By the way the
partition didn't just show up one day. It was there all the time. What did
change some how was it appearing visible, but the partition always existed.

 

[Alan]

Thanks for that, I'll getting in touch with HP. Also you've solved the
mystery of the D drive suddenly appearing!
Regards,
Alan.

 

[Chris F Clark]

You may or may not be stuffed, so be careful. The people who are
advising you to "give up" and simply install from scratch are just as
bad as your friend who told you delete the recovery partition.

If you haven't done something too drastic already it *may* be possible
to recover everything. Deleting (without "shredding" as it is
normally called) a partition, doesn't make it go away, it just removes
the information that knows where the partition is, which is called
something like the "master partition table". That is kept on your
disk (at the "beginning" if I recall correctly).

Being on your disk, it (the master partition table) can get scribbled
on, or damaged in a "disk crash" or have sundry other bad things
happen to it. If that happens, bits that should be 1 can become 0 and
vice versa. One of those bits causes certain paritions to be hidden
(invisible, you can't see them when you ask what's on the disk).
Another bit marks which partitions are "active" and can be booted
from. Other bits are used for numbers (addresses) of where the
partitions are on the disk. etc., ad nauseum.

When you delete a partition, the addresses in the master partition
table for that partition are zeroed out. However, the actual data for
the partition is still there. If the master partition table gets
scribbled on (rare, but it does happen), that can cause the same
effect.

Fortunately, because the data may still actually be present on the
disk, there are programs that can find and recover (undelete)
partitions (and do other repairs). Those programs may be able to find
the partitions that you (or a glitch) deleted. They won't be able to
find the deleted partitions if you "format" the drive or if you
install new data into an apparently "empty" partition. (The same
thing that happens at the partition level, happens at the file level,
a deleted file may be undeleted in some cases, provided nothing else
has written on the part of the disk where the actual file used to
reside before being deleted.)

So, if you really don't want to lose what you had (and it isn't
already to late), you need to get a disk recovery tool, and try using
that before you go and reinstall from scratch. Now, your situation is
a little more dire since you don't have an operating system, but it
still may be possible to recover it--many of the disk recovery tools
work from bootable disks (floppys or cds).

The real question is how much the data you lost is worth to you. It
will probably take some time and money to attempt to do a disk
recovery, and it may or may not work. The question is whether the
chance of recovering that data is worth the price of the attempt.

Best of luck,
-Chris

 

[Alan]

Hi Chris and Rock,
The machine has made a full recovery, albeit one which has reverted to the
original factory settings. This isn't a problem though because 99% of what
was on it I have backed up either on an external hard drive or on discs,
just means I'll have to spend an evening putting it all back.
It was when Rock told me that the partition was always there but not visible
that I began to think I had a chance, I thought that something drastic had
happened when that suddenly appeared.
I got in touch with HP who guided me through the whole recovery process and
I'm back to square one with it.
Many thanks to both you, and all who took the time to respond, it's very
much appreciated.
Regards,
Alan.

 

[Rock]

Great, Alan, glad it's fixed now. Thanks or posting back.

Hi Chris and Rock,
The machine has made a full recovery, albeit one which has reverted to the
original factory settings. This isn't a problem though because 99% of what
was on it I have backed up either on an external hard drive or on discs,
just means I'll have to spend an evening putting it all back.
It was when Rock told me that the partition was always there but not
visible that I began to think I had a chance, I thought that something
drastic had happened when that suddenly appeared.
I got in touch with HP who guided me through the whole recovery process
and I'm back to square one with it.
Many thanks to both you, and all who took the time to respond, it's very
much appreciated.
Regards,
Alan.

<snip>