ok just a quick question here, its on my old ****y laptop so arnt overly worried.

 

ok so i go to turn it on (was working a few days ago) and it ends up saying that the operating system can not be found... now would this be due to a virus or hardware/software problems? its very rarely connected to the net so im doubting that its a virus but just thought id put it here to see wat i get.

 

Cheers.

Could be some sort of hardware fault resulting in the boot sectors becoming corrupted or something...

 

IDK, just a guess. Ask Psy or something, hes like Yoda..

happened to me a while back...Hard drive corruption, apparently they have a limited life, lucky there so cheap now.

As the other two guys mentioned, boot sectors can magically corrupt (well not really but we'll leave it at that) as has happened to both a friend's and my father's laptops. The fact that laptops generally sustain more impacts (even if you're one of the careful ones) and the squished in nature of their components means a considerable amount of heat, neither of which specifically cause HDD failure, but they sure don't help your chances. That being said, I've had two year old 3.5" drives kark themselves and my ex's laptop is going on 4 years strong now with the ol' 80GB 7200rpm [guess who specced her one ] in there.

 

Basically it depends what the underlying issue is... maybe a one off bad-luck corruption (unlikely imo) or perhaps a drive that is starting to show its age. You can try to repair the MBR, which I believe is doable off the windows installer disks, if not there'll be programs on google (I'm doing uni work so don't have time to search myself) which should aid you in it. Check the BIOS to see if it's picking up the drive, perhaps throw in a bootable partition-magic cd and grab a chunk and put a flavour of linux or a new windows-lite install on, grab the important data off the old partition and go from there. Alternatively you can just get a 2.5" IDE connector and throw the HDD into your desktop, grab the files you need off it, and try a fresh windows install... you might get lucky and there's no [ongoing hardware] issue.

 

Same thing happened to a friend of mine about 2 months ago, we struggled and struggled with it, eventually grabbed the important files off it (IDE connection) and just chucked it away, was really old. New drive went in and everything's sweet now.

Edited October 21, 200816 yr by Husker

cheers guys for the help. im really not overly worried about it as its a POS ex-government laptop that u just picked up to take to school and for that sorta work, got nothing important on it so im not worried and not keen to spend ne real money on it lol.

 

cheers for the help

nother thing to consider, you didn't change the BIOS to boot from USB or some other device primarily? Reason I ask that is a couple of laptops both at work and at home (not mine but siblings) both started not booting. Had my USB key plugged in each time (its been setup so you can boot Knoppix), each time i removed it and restarted, booted up fine. I had changed the settings originally to boot from USB but had changed it back, for some reason the machines didn't like having the USB key plugged in. Tested it with other USB devices and well, same thing.

 

Oh and the time old tradition tech support reply "have you pressed the eject button on the floppy disk drive?" (o;

Steal my thunder Mcdeth...

 

Check that floppy or cd drives are empty... Get into the BIOS & see if boot priority is set to the HDD... also may pay to replace the BIOS battery as it may have gone flat & setting default on startup every time.. CR2032 is the usual battery on most motherboards... also (thinks this was suggested) check that all the ide ribbons & power cables are connected to the drive & mother board properly.

 

If that dont work.... run it over with your car... Wont fix it, but, it is quite satisfying :notworthy:

Edited October 22, 200816 yr by FJ

nah lol, me and a mate are thinking of taking it out bush and shooting it then burning it (his idea lol)

hehehe.... Then give it to some loser that you hate for christmas...

one more idea... if you have turned on that SMART monitoring on in the BIOS.... try turning that off & reboot.... (that is such a longshot)

nah lol, me and a mate are thinking of taking it out bush and shooting it then burning it (his idea lol)

 

you mean like this? (o;

 

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gujp3PxkkNg

 

(BEST MOVIE EVER!!!)

2 things, your HDD has died or its just corrupted some how.

 

Just get your OS installation disks and reinstall the OS than put drivers and software back on and you should have no more problems.

 

If its the HDD than you can replace it yourself for about $75 and away you go.

 

Of course check the Bios that the disk is set as the first boot device in the boot order.

 

I think you will find reinstalling (or repairing) the OS will fix your issue and is very easy to do and won't cost a thing.