'operating system not found'

teenage_Drama

so i bought this dell computer off someone and it was working fine last night..restarted it ..had a clear look at it before purchasing and was perfect. turned it on today and it says 'operating system not found' :mad: :mad:

put an xp windows cd in to re-install the whole system but as it was on setup it said 'no hard drives found'

please could somebody help me...

scheming_gypsy

was it working perfectly at theirs or yours? if it was at theirs then it's possible the IDE or power cable came out of the drive in transit.

albertross_2

you may have bought a duff one, but as it has just been moved, check all the leads are firmly plugged into the hard disk, check to see if it spinning, and check in the bios, that the ide is set to auto.

teenage_Drama

scheming_gypsy wrote:

was it working perfectly at theirs or yours? if it was at theirs then it's possible the IDE or power cable came out of the drive in transit.

it was working perfectly at mines and theirs.

teenage_Drama

albertross wrote:

you may have bought a duff one, but as it has just been moved, check all the leads are firmly plugged into the hard disk, check to see if it spinning, and check in the bios, that the ide is set to auto.

whats a duff one *confused*?

yeah ive actually taken the leads out enough times now and turned the power off etc to see if the message goes and my window starts normally but no luck.

i dont understand 'bios' and 'ide'

teenage_Drama

i remember with my dell laptop the tech support person made me press a few buttons on start up which i think was control F11 OR F4 or something and that got the system restored etc easily

is there anything i can press to restore the whole thing as this is a computer?????????????????

scheming_gypsy

nope, if it can't find the hard drive you can press as many buttons as you want and it can't find it.

When you say you've taken all the leads out are you talking internal cables or the wires at the back? you'd need to take the lid off the computer and check the cables that come out of the back of the drive... (there should be 2, if there's one you've found your problem)


BIOS = basic input output system.. It's part of the motherboard which stores information about the system.. ie what size the hard drive is, if there's a floppy drive in it, if the onboard video is enabled etc etc.

IDE = a type of drive 'design'.

teenage_Drama

i suppose there are two as it was working fine last night.

if there arent two i dont know how it could be working last night

scheming_gypsy

1 might have come loose in transit and you got lucky last night with it coming on.

Pop the lid off and make sure all the internal wires are securly in place.

teenage_Drama

i just checked and there are two

teenage_Drama

anything else i could do before taking it to a computer engineer?