Operating System Not Found On Any Devices

[dgaines88]

I just got a Compq 5012 from a friend, it origanlly (out of the box) came with Windows ME. Some where along the lines He states that Lynex? was installed, or at least an atempt to install was done. I thought good starter for the wife. I got it home and and fired it up, it went through the Compaq starter screen and then went black, then the message "Operating System Not Found On Any DEVICES," I tried to Load Windows 2000 Pro, When all was said and done, I Got THE SAME Message. I can get into NET BIOS, And All is well there. It SEEMS to me that there is enough of something working in the 'puter to atleast get me to the screen hat is telling me that there is no OS. Am I going to have to get my hands on some Compaq restore disc's or what? Any suggestions or advice would be gratly appreiciated, I will be checking back, many times to see if there are any replies...Thanks in advance for your help...... Dale

[fatboyjim]

Hi

Welcome to the boards. Looks like something's messed up somewhere along the line! This 'attempted' install sounds like where it went wrong!

I think your best bet would be a Compaq restore disc to be honest, that way you can wipe everything off and get back to factory settings, then you can play with it yourself to get it how you like it.


(It's spelt 'linux' by the way) :P

Good luck

Jim

[dgaines88]

Thanx Jim, Not quite the answer I was looking for, but if thats the way it is.......thats the way I will go......Thanx again...
Dale

[dgaines88]

Sory Jim...Tried it, I tried a mariad of things....the STUPID THING boots, but no matter what effort I make, it still tells me that there is no os on any of the devises, I've now tried to load "win2kPro" 5 times, and when that did not work, I tied to load "XP" for some doggone reason The Machine will not alow these OS's to load and install, It will not "restore" using the Compaq quick restore discs... am I missing something? is there just a way to strip it of any and all (for lack of better term) Knowledge that it ever had and start with a fresh disc?
I'm at a loss now...any help would and IS welcome... Thanks, Dale

[fatboyjim]

Ok mate I'm not 100% sure how the Compaq machines work but you can give this a go

Firstly, you need to check (and I should have mentioned this before, sorry) that the PC is trying to boot from the Hard drive. To do this get into BIOS and in one of the menus there should be "Boot From:" or similar and it will have the option to change from perhaps A, C, CDROM to any combination of the above. Or it may be in the form of three menu items, first one being "First boot device". Stick your "C" or "HDD" or "IDE1" as the first option and reboot. If you still get the error then get back into BIOS and change it to boot from "Floppy" or "A"

I looks like the Hard Drive has had maybe two or three operating systems incorrectly installed and whatever compaq program that is loaded on boot (to tell you there is no OS) obviously cannot find one

It may be worth doing a Zero-Write/Low Level Format on the drive. You can do this with a utility I've uploaded onto my webspace. Download http://www.jimlaflin.f2s.com/files/zerofill.zip

Then unzip it, and in the Zerofill folder you will see 8 files, copy these all over to a formatted Floppy disk and put this in your computer when you turn it on (With first boot device set to A or Floppy)

After a while you will get a command prompt
(A:\ or similar)

type in A: and press enter
type WIPE 0 (that's a ZERO) and press enter
Type Y or y and press enter
Wait a long time!
When it is successful take the floppy out, press reset and try again. What this has done is wiped your hard drive completely, the "NO OS" program should no longer load and you should be OK to just load a normal Windows XP disc or Compaq disc


Thanks,

Jim

[dgaines88]

I want to thank you for your help......I finally decided that something was wrong, when I could access the HD when attempting to load, but could not even find it in my BIOS, thinking that there was an intermitent connection, on my ribbon somewhere, I opened the 'puter, and spotted the problem right away.....Don't laught too hard, appearently, at one time, there was a second HD installed, and wouldn't you know it, the little shunt on the remaining (Western Digital) hard drive was still in the slave, or cable connect position. I pulled it out and threw it away!!!!! Imediately, Power on,the BIOS finds it, and BINGO, I GOTTA working computer, now of course I'm not gonna let you know how many times I tried to install Win2000Pro, or that I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD, and stripped the hard drive thinking the same thing that you did, TOO many OS's on the hard drive. Thank God this one is for the wife....... Thanx again, really, a million, it's good to know that people are out there that can help or steer (sometimes semi-steer) you in the right direction.
God Bless, Dale

[fatboyjim]

OK mate glad to hear you got it working

Jim