Operating System Not Found

[USMDude]

I'm working on a guy's computer to figure out what he needs to upgrade in it. He recently got it from his family so he doesn't know what all is in it. It's a Compaq mini-tower (ugh!) and when I turned it on it told me after the BIOS splash screen that "Operating System Not Found on Any Devices" or something like that. I had a floppy with me at the time and it could read the floppy so I assume it can read a CD as well.

What would be the best solution to getting to the desktop, aside from just throwing the computer out the window? Keep in mind that I'm not even sure what operating system he's using, although I have a XP Reinstall CD that came with my Dell laptop that I can use if I need to.

Once I can get to the desktop, whatever solution I may have to use, I can at least let him know what he has so I can help him figure out what to upgrade. Thanks.

[Statica]

Originally Posted by USMDude What would be the best solution to getting to the desktop, aside from just throwing the computer out the window? Keep in mind that I'm not even sure what operating system he's using, although I have a XP Reinstall CD that came with my Dell laptop that I can use if I need to.

Have you checked the BIOS to see which device it's trying to boot from? Make sure that it is pointing to the hard drive.
Your first task should be to see what operating system is loaded on the system and then go from there.
Go to bootdisk.com and download a driver free bootdisk. Use it to boot to the system and then examine the contents of the hard drive, you should get plenty of clues as to exactly which version of Windows it is.
Depending on the version of windows you can recover the installation fairly easily.

[Cricket]

Try replacing the IDE cable to the hard drive first.

If that doesn't work, find out what hard drive is in use and then go to the manufacturer's web site and download the diagnostic utility and test the hard drive with it.

You won't be able to use the DELL WinXP CD on the Compaq, won't work.

Cricket

[faulkner132]

How old is the Compaq? It's possible there is a hidden partition (about 30 MB) at the beginning of the hard drive which makes the system bootable. If you delete/corrupt this partition you won't be able to boot the system. Older Compaq's, I know, used to use this method.

[USMDude]

Well I used scandisk and fdisk off of a MS-DOS 6.22 disk I had made and I was having problems getting either to recognize that a C: drive even existed in the computer which made me think that it was hardware-related. After some complicated fishing around in the case (if you've ever worked with a Compaq or HP mini-tower you know exactly what I'm talking about) I got the HDD out and looked underneath and saw a control chip of sorts on the circuit board and noticed there was one small line coming from the middle of the chip out toward the pins, where there was a black burned spot. I figured that somehow the HDD got fried in between when his parents gave the guy the computer and when I took a look at it in his apartment the first time.

If anybody thinks otherwise, let me know. I'm looking into getting him a replacement hard drive and go from there.