Matt Young Posted September 3, 2003 Report Posted September 3, 2003 So last night, I was browsing the forums and my computer suddenly froze. No big deal, I thought, since it's happened before and I had no problems once I reset it. However, this time was different. I tried resetting the computer, but it didn't work, so I turned the power off and then back on. I've done that before as well, and had no problems afterwards. This time, though, instead of displaying the Windows ME screen, I got a black screen that said, "Operating system not found" over and over again. I have no idea what to do... Is my computer fucked?
MrRant Posted September 3, 2003 Report Posted September 3, 2003 Do you have a boot disk? Because it is basically saying that when it's looking at your HD it's not finding Windows at all.
Guest TheGame2705 Posted September 3, 2003 Report Posted September 3, 2003 That means more than likely everything on the comp is gone. Get a system disk for winME and then when it gets to the command prompt type C:\dir and if it says nothing found then your computer's done. Redo everything.
justsoyouknow Posted September 3, 2003 Report Posted September 3, 2003 Yeah, get yourself a boot disk. If you know how to get to your command prompt during the boot process, do so. It should read C:\> ...type in dir/p and then look if you can find the Windows directory yourself.
Guest Ecto Cooler Posted September 3, 2003 Report Posted September 3, 2003 The hard drive most likely went to shit. Happened to me 3 years ago like 4 months after I got my computer - the 6 gig HD that came preinstalled just made this noise and died. All the data was gone and I got the exact same "operating system not found" error message.
CanadianChris Posted September 3, 2003 Report Posted September 3, 2003 That happened to me last year. Got back from vacation, turned the computer on and the hard disk was fried. I took it in, and it turns out that there was a defect at the factory (Fujitsu) that would wipe out the boot sector of the hard drive after some unspecified period of time. It SUCKS.
The Kid Posted September 4, 2003 Report Posted September 4, 2003 Same thing happened to me last year as well, it's brutal. Your computer is DONE.
Nevermortal Posted September 4, 2003 Report Posted September 4, 2003 Funny thing. On my old computer, I got the operating system not found message when I booted up, but if I powered off and then powered back on, the system would be back to normal. The computer finally shit the bed around Dec. 2002, 3 years & 3 months after the original purchase.
Dr. Tom Posted September 4, 2003 Report Posted September 4, 2003 People at work encounter this problem, and rebooting (usually a full power-down and then a cold boot) tends to solve the problem. Also, make sure your hard drive is being detected in BIOS. We run 2000 at work, so it's not really the same as XP, but I'd say only about 15-20% of cases like this have actually wound up with the hard drive being trashed.
Ripper Posted September 5, 2003 Report Posted September 5, 2003 This kept happening at my old office when I realized that all the computers hardrives were set up as slaves. You would get the no operating system thing, power down and most of the time it would come back. But then we started switching them all to the master IDE slot and all was fine. Pop that baby open and see whats what.
Dr. Tom Posted September 5, 2003 Report Posted September 5, 2003 Most drives today are set to Cable Select as the default. I've never liked Cable Select, so I always set a drive as Master if I have to work on it.
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