benidorm

Can anyone help me ? My laptop is a Presario F500. When i press the power on key my laptop loads up the compaq window with the option to go into BIOS setup, but then Windows fails to load and it just shuts down and restarts again going through the same process, after a few attempts at this another screen comes up telling me that the operating system cannot be found. Help needed please.

jamiemac2005

Go into your bios and check the boot media/method, make sure it's your hard drive with vista installed on it (or the logical drive with vista installed on it)...
If it is then post back, if not change it...

Cheers,
Jamey

benidorm

ive gone into the bios setup screen, but i cant see anything what you said.
all there is on the boot options are ;
CD-ROM Boot
Floppy Boot
Internal Network Adaptor Boot
Which i can only enable and disable these settings

jamiemac2005

Okay, no "boot order"? anything like that? I guess that makes some form of sence but usually you'll find a list (order) of drives to boot from... but if not then make sure all these are disabled (so it boots from the hard drive)... If you get the "cant find operating system" error again then theres something very wrong, either your hard-drive being dead or the boot sector being corrupted... i don't know what to suggest? how long has it been happening? do you have restore disks? you could always try using a copy of BartPE or similar to see if you can find your files on the hard disk (BartPE is a stripped down version of windows that runs off a cd and it can be used to retrieve files when stuff goes wrong[depending on the severity of the situation])...

Cheers,
Jamey

jamiemac2005

Ah, another thing to check... Flip your laptop[re-read to see if it's a laptop] upside down and take a screwdriver to the hard-drive compartment on it and see that the hard-drive is connected correctly, (it will be easy to find it will usually be one of the compartments that only takes a couple screws to undo and is undoable without the whole bottom of the laptop coming undone) you can probably search for your PC's specs/diagrams online to find out where it is if you're uncomfortable doing this...

Cheers,
Jamey

benidorm

Hiya
ive tried the boot order and that didnt work, and ive had open both compartments on my laptop and nothing seems to be out of place.
Ill be trying a recovery disc when i download it off the pc.
Thanks for all your help.

jamiemac2005

kk hope it all gets sorted,
As i said if you have any files that you need on your pc you could try use a PE disk to retreive them...

Cheers,
Jamey

TriggerFinger

hi benidorm,

when you boot up you reach Windows logo right? Try removing the hard drive and attaching it again. that will ensure a good connection to the motherboard.

one more thing to do is to run HDD diags. if you know the brand of your hard drive, d/load the hard drive (HDD) diagnostic utility (see link from my sig). get the ISO version. if you are not sure of the brand, get the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test ISO and burn the image to a blank CD. use ImgBurn (link on my sig) if you do not have a CD burner program. DO NOT COPY THE ISO DIRECTLY TO CD. the CD media created is bootable. pop that in your CD drive and boot from it. ensure boot sequence in your BIOS has CD drive first on the list. once you boot the CD, select QUICK TEST if you are using the HITACHI DFT diagnostic utility.

post back if you have questions on the above... or if you have any results.