Operating System not found...

I have been using my notebook off and on and recently retrieved some crucial
data from it.
However, today, when I tried to boot it, I get the message "Operating System
not found" right after BIOS and Setup.
Any idea what is happening?
It is a p2-266 running win98. The only thing I noticed oin the Setup that
looked wrong is that the Primary Master was set to "none" so I changed it to
"auto" but still no happiness.
Please do enlighten!
thnx, hj.

 

Hello,
Well, this usually means the hard disk is dead. Try booting back into the
BIOS and if you have an "autodetect"
feature, see if it will find the hard disk.
If it fails, boot with a Windows98 Startup disk and from the A:\ drive run
FDISK. See it choice 4 will show
your C:\ drive. If not take it to a shop, The hard disk is most likely gone
to hard disk heaven...or where ever
they go when they are dead,
DennisC

 

agree with computer guy. Sometimes with a laptop removing hard disk and
batteries and reinserting them helps.

 

Possibly a connection came loose from the HDD, either ribbon or power.

 

I had the same problem with a brand new computer but the difference between
your problem and mine though is I don't have a lap top. I would only
recommend taking it to the shop as a last resort. The computer guy up town
told me that I had one of two options, 1................Go into msconfig to
the startups menu and disable everything and then to slowly put check marks
back into only the programs I used the most or needed to boot at start up or
2.....................Restart my computer every couple of days and just
leave it on all the time. He told me that most people left their computers
on all the time and that believe it or not doing this would not hardly use
any extra power. Well I did go into msconfig and disable everything but my
firewall and Norton from loading and just manually load the programs I need
after booting. I changed the power setting to automatically turn off my
monitor after 20 minutes. I have not had this problem since and that was
about three months ago. Unfortunely you have a laptop and I have a desktop
which I can leave on all the time. This is just my opinion as if you don't
have to replace your whole drive then I wouldn't. Maybe too somebody else
will read this post and have other options.

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Okay call me crazy, but the last time I got that message, I couldn't go into
msconfig. Why? Because I had NO operating system.

Jake.

 

Obviously you must fix the problem before you use msconfig to fix the problem.

-Barry
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