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Help. Operating System not found

post #1 of 13
7/15/03 at 4:07am
Thread Starter 
OK,
So am minding my own business last night, playing Master of Orion 3, when suddenly, while calculating a turn, my 5660 freezes up. I can't Alt-Tab out, and Cont-Alt-Del doesn't work, so I have to do a hard reset to get it running. I do this and it starts to load. The first screen (the one where you can F2 to BIOS) come up, then it goes to the next screen. At this point I get a "Operating System Not Found" message at the top of the screen.....and nothing else. Hitting any key just repeats the message. Oh, and typical of this sort of thing....I am leaving town in a couple of days. it is like it knows.

What do you think?

I have two guesses.

The easy one would be that Windows XPpro has a problem, and I can just reinstall that to get it running again. What process do I need to follow to do this? Can I just install it over the top of the old one. Any advice on how to do this without screwing anything up?

The bad one would be that the harddrive has failed, and that would suck. Any way to determine if this has happened? I am only about 7 months out on the warranty, so definitely covered. Many more questions later if this turns out to be the problem.


Any other guesses? A step by step of things to check/do would really help. Thanks folks.
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post #2 of 13
7/15/03 at 5:47am
OK, first check your bios by F2ing when you reboot. Check to make sure your hard drive is detected. You should see the amount of hard drive space you have. If everything seems normal there you can do one of two things:
1. Pop a bootdisk in (get one from here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm) I prefer the Windows ME OEM....

Have the bootdisk start your computer. You can see if all the files are intact on your hard drive, then you can go on and reinstall an OS. Or...

2.You can just pop the Windows XP cd in and restart your computer. You can have Windows XP try to do a "repair installation" or just an installation. If you decided to go with a regular installation, do not reformat your hard drive if you want to keep all your files. Just reinstall over the present windows directory.

Hopefully it is not a hardware issue that you have. I really doubt it is a hardware issue....it is probably some corupted files in windows (possibley due to a virus) and a quick reinstalling should do that trick to get you booted back up. Once up and running....I would definetly back up your important files and format your hard drive, then reinstall windows again. I say this because if you do have a problem as serious as this, it is bound to haunt you again unless you just wipe out the problem. I hope you find this helpfull and good luck!
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post #3 of 13
7/15/03 at 4:15pm
Thread Starter 

First Step

Well, I looked in BIOS, and where it says Primary Master (I think that is the right place) is says none.

Anyway, I tried loading up the XP disk, and it said that no Hard Drive was located. So I guess that means it is my worst case scenario. I will check some other threads now on what step to take next (cause I think others have had bad hard drives before). Any further steps would be good. I would really hate to lose everything on there. It is important stuff. Oh, and I guess this means I need to contact Sager for an RMA too. Any help on where to go from here?

Thanks.
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post #4 of 13
7/15/03 at 4:20pm
sounds like it may be just a loose connection if it's just not there in bios. if you're not comfortable opeining it up to reseat the drive connection i guess you can go to sager with it.
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post #5 of 13
7/15/03 at 4:39pm
Thread Starter 

Well [none] is the first message

When I said it says none under primary master. That was partially true. Hitting enter takes me into the setup for that drive and it shows various settings.

Primary Master [None]

Type: [Auto]
Multi-Sector Transfers: [16 Sectors]
LBA Mode Control [Enabled]
Transfer mode: [FPIO 4 / DMA 2]
Ultra DMA Mode: [Mode 5]

Could someone else with a 5660 check to see if this is any different than theirs?
Anyway, another post suggested that I check to see if the drive is seated correctly. I did this and it doesn't seem to be helping. Which could mean 1 of two things. Either the drive itself is bad, or some connection from the drive to elsewhere is bad. I am hoping for the second. Anyway, I guess I will call PCTorque first, and see if they have any miracle advice. Then I will call Sager and head down the RMA channel. I will keep peeps informed cause I think support is important for others to see if they are thinking of buying.
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post #6 of 13
7/15/03 at 9:05pm
I'm sorry that the harddrive didn't get detected. I know that must be a real bummer. Please do keep us informed and good luck.
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post #7 of 13
7/15/03 at 9:26pm
First, Can you hear the HD spin up when you power on the laptop. If yes then you not 'totally screwed'.
Next, Take a look in the User's manual to see how to access the HD. Check the cables. It's best to remove the connector and reseat it just to make sure.
Now, if all goes well it's time to see if the BIOS reconizes the drive if it does we're that much better.
If you still get the "no os found" then try booting with the XP disk in rescue mode. then try using the 'fixmbr' utility and hopefully you won't have to re-install the OS.

If this fails and you don't have another HD you can swap out to ensure the drive is bad and not something else then you'll have to RMA sager. Try to test another HD because Sager will RMA a HD to you (with CC # on hold) and you can then ship the bad HD back to them. It's alot cheaper and faster this way. If your lucky they'll hold some else's CC# (don't ask me how this happended I still don't know ) and ship the drive out to you. For me it took a couple days then I shipped the old drive back the UPS ground (<$10)
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post #8 of 13
7/17/03 at 3:18pm
I just had the same problem on my 5660 that is about the same age as yours. It was definitely a bad hard drive, which Sager replaced with no questions. It is a pain to lose everything though.
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post #9 of 13
8/21/03 at 8:36pm
Thread Starter 

Thank God

OK, so stuff is finally coming along on this issue. I finally had an opportunity to plug the hard drive into an enclosure, and it booted up no problem!!!!!!

So I have at least extracted the important stuff, and now am ready to contact sager and send it in to have them look at it. I am just so happy that the information is intact, at this point I wouldn't mind if the computer was a total loss and I got a new one (with the wideangle screen? ) Either that or fix up this one, I couldn't care less either way.
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post #10 of 13
8/21/03 at 9:34pm
Good to hear, schlo.

Let us know how the return goes.
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post #11 of 13
8/28/03 at 10:31pm
i had this same problem with my 5660. I had to return it to Sager, but after they fixed it, my comp seems to boot up MUCH slower than before. tell me if you experience this too.
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post #12 of 13
8/29/03 at 3:48am
I just got the same problem, happened all of a sudden to.

I can hear the hard disk skipping, scratching, spinning up/down etc..

The computer freezes to, and then blue screens and when back to
boot screen, and it gives me that "Operating System Not Found" error.

Guess im a have to get a RMA, bought my 5670-V from PC Torque
in May, this really sux, as I use this notebook for work, and plus
starting school next week

I was lucky though that I use a program called "Drive Image",
which I had automated to backup my drive daily on the network.

I have it set to create an image daily at 6:00 am.Talk about a
close call. Im happy I invested into that life saver of a program.

Update

I called Sager and left a message, they then called me back a little
over an hour. I then got my RMA No. and I have already shipped
out to them on 2 day service. The tech guy said I should have a
replacement by friday. I hope so, because I really need my lappy.
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post #13 of 13
9/3/03 at 3:42pm
Thread Starter 

OK, so the Drama continues

So i have my RMA, and am ready to send it in. They have been very good about calling me back to answer questions, and accomodating my interest in getting my old hard drive back to me if it is found to be defective, cause I know I can recover the information off of it.
Anyway, I hadn't tried it out since I was able to recover the information. I didn't even really think about it until this morning, as I am getting ready to pack it up.

So needless to say, it loaded up fine, CMOS detects my hard drive perfectly, and everything looks exactly the same as a month ago. So what should I do? I can't really justify sending in a perfectly good working computer, but I can't understand what the problem was with the machine either. I don't want to just pretend the problem has disappeared, but it really seems to have? Any ideas on what might have happened?


Joyously,
Shlo
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