No operating system found

[Barb and Ray]

Have an approximate four-year-old HP WinXP Home computer that has been
working fine. Went on vacation for two weeks and it was powered off during
that time. When trying to boot up after return, the "No operating system
found" message came up on a black screen.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Thanks very much for any help.

Barb

 

[Ghostrider]

Have an approximate four-year-old HP WinXP Home computer that has been
working fine. Went on vacation for two weeks and it was powered off during
that time. When trying to boot up after return, the "No operating system
found" message came up on a black screen.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Thanks very much for any help.

Barb

Start by entering bios setup and go over the settings. Have
it re-detect the hard drive(s). Next, locate where the CMOS
battery is located and replace. At 4 years, it is due to be
replaced.

 

[Malke]

Have an approximate four-year-old HP WinXP Home computer that has been
working fine. Went on vacation for two weeks and it was powered off
during
that time. When trying to boot up after return, the "No operating system
found" message came up on a black screen.

The message means that the computer can't find an operating system to boot.
Things to try:

1. See if the hard drive is seen in the BIOS.

a. If not, open the machine and reseat the drive cable and power supply
connector. If still not seen, proceed to step 2.

b. If yes, then run a drive diagnostic utility from the hard drive mftr.

2. If the drive isn't seen in the BIOS, slave the drive in another machine
to determine if the issue is with the drive or the motherboard.

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with
known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).

Malke

 

[Barb and Ray]

O.K. battery has been replaced with a new one, but problem still exists.

This is a dumb question, but can you tell us how we get the BIOS setup to
re-detect the hard drive? Thank you for your time.

 

[Ghostrider]

O.K. battery has been replaced with a new one, but problem still exists.

This is a dumb question, but can you tell us how we get the BIOS setup to
re-detect the hard drive? Thank you for your time.

It will be using one of the F keys, e.g., F2, F10, etc., or one
of the special function keys, e.g., DEL, ESC. It might mention
it at the start of POST. Otherwise, read the manual or visit the
HP website.

If HD not detected, follow up on Malke's suggestions. She is
pretty good.

 

[Guest]

clean the dust bunnies out, try removing the drive cable from the drive and
the motherboard and reinstall, sometimes the connections get oxidized and
need to be reinstalled. be careful if using a vacumn as you can cause static
discharge and create worse problems.

 

[Jonny]

Have an approximate four-year-old HP WinXP Home computer that has been
working fine. Went on vacation for two weeks and it was powered off
during that time. When trying to boot up after return, the "No operating
system found" message came up on a black screen.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Thanks very much for any help.

Barb

Message means a few of things. First it means the intended media was found
for booting, and the mbr was found. Secondly, the pointer in the mbr for
the bootable partition was found (may or may not be correct). Thirdly, it
means the pointed to area of the bootable partition could not be found for
an operating system.

Possible causes include the bios not interpreting the hard drive CHS layout
correctly. A mbr with a virus. A failing hard drive. If system was left
in standby or hibernate for 2 weeks, a power loss or power surge may have
caused a loss of data including operating system files or their location
properly in the filesystem table. How to fix it depends which is the
culprit.

 

[HeyBub]

Have an approximate four-year-old HP WinXP Home computer that has been
working fine. Went on vacation for two weeks and it was powered off
during that time. When trying to boot up after return, the "No
operating system found" message came up on a black screen.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Thanks very much for any help.

"... it was powered off."

Does that mean that since time immemorial your machine had been powered on?
If so, you may have a problem that is temperature dependent (warm=works,
cold=dead).

Try letting the machine warm up for a few hours.