Operating System Not Found

Yikes... After monitoring my temps using Hankos program, I turned the acpiec back on and shut down. When I turned it back on... I got "Operating System Not Found" So I turned it off, and back on again and things were working. What could've caused this? Not only did it scare the crap out of me, but now I'm scared it'll do it again... and again... and again...

I'm guessing not because that's the first time that's happened. And it worked again after turning off and back on again.

Any other thoughts?

It's happening again and this time it's not going away! I'm having to RMA my extra hard drive because it makes weird noises on shutdown, so I took it out to get the serial number. Turned my 8890 on and everything was fine. I put it back in to see if the noise it was making was still there, turned on and it was fine (but the noise was still there). So I took it back out, put the old bracket back in (empty) and went to boot up... "Operating System Not Found".

I've turned it off and on about 5 times now and the same thing every time. I even put the other drive BACK in and tried it to no avail. What do I do?!?!?!

EDIT: More info: I tried again hoping time might be an effective remedy, but nope. The drive DOES show up in the bios and also is detected before you get to the bios. And so does the second drive when it's plugged in. I tried hooking up to AC adaptor and that also didn't help. Am I totally screwed?!?!

I was planning on it eventually, but it sucks to HAVE to and lose all my data. It's been a while since I've backed up.

Thanks G, I'll try it. I only took out the 2nd drive when doing it, but I reapplied the AS5 right before doing so. But like I said, AFTER reapplying the AS5, I took the drive out, tested and we were good. Put the drive back in and we were good. Then took it out and all went bad. I'll update you when I try reseating both drives.

Phew, thank you Jesus (the sincere thanks, not the blashpheming kind )! And thank you too G, for the moral support.

Ok, so here's what happened in case any of you find yourself in similar situations. I did as G suggested and still nothing. So I went into the bios to check the drive was there still and it was (it had always showed up, just wouldn't load XP). I was flipping through the bios pages and through the manual pages when I notice the Primary Master was set to [NONE]. Something I hadn't noticed before. So read for a while in my manual and found the page that mentioned in the Advanced 'tab' in the bios, the "Reset Configuration Data" option. It says:

"You can change the setting to [YES] if you have insalled a new add-on which has reconfigured the system, resulting in such a serious system conflict that the operating system is unable to boot."

So flicked it to [YES] as I really had nothing to lose, said one last "Please, Jesus, make this work so I don't have to RMA my whole machine", crossed my fingers, jumped up and down, spun around, and held my breath while I powered up again. I think I know which one was the deciding factor.

And there ya have it. Still have to RMA my second drive, but I'm relieved. I don't really understand HOW my Primary Master got set to [NONE] though - I mean, I had put the drive in, taken it back out and then put it back in again with no similar effect. It's always the last one!

Thanks again G.

EDIT: Ok, I tried putting the drive back in one final time to try and recover the data I had put on it (which wasn't much) and boom. Same thing. Primary Master set to [NONE]. The drive must be bad, but I'm still wondering why this didn't happen the first few times. Tell you what tho, it sure is nice to be posting from my own machine!

I couldn't find any. I had it set to the 'slave', which worked fine until that last time removing it.

I tried putting back in again this morning, same thing. But this time I left the second drive in, and tried resetting the configuration data and same thing again. Does this sound like it's a bad drive?

G, I did read that, but he was talking about setting up RAID, which I wasn't doing, so didn't consider that as what I should do. Previous experience (granted, with desktops...) let me to the 'slave' conclusion.

I guess I didn't do my homework well enough. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll try switching to cable select mode and trying again. If that is the problem though, why would it have been fine the first few times installing it?

Hmm, ok. Well I'll try setting to cable select and try again when I get home. Thanks G

You would've what? Reformatted?