Operating system not found while booting my DELL laptop

Hi and welcome to TSF please try going into the bios and set the harddrive as first boot device save and exit then try booting,you can try pressing enter when booting and see if that gets you to the bios or it might be the delete key ther is normally a message at the bottom left of the screen when you boot telling you which key or keys to use,if you miss the time in which to do it just start over

How do I get to the bios?
When I turn the computer on, it tells me to press F2 for Setup or F12 for boot device selection menu. Whether I press either function or not, the following thing is Operating system not found

joeten said:

you can try pressing enter when booting and see if that gets you to the bios or it might be the delete key ther is normally a message at the bottom left of the screen when you boot telling you which key or keys to use,if you miss the time in which to do it just start over

Click to expand...

There'll be a message on the bottom of your screen telling you a button to push to enter the BIOS. Usually the DEL key or an F key.

You might not be pressing the F key fast enough. Sometimes you don't have much time to do it before the system attempts to boot into Windows. That's probably why you're seeing the error even when you press the button.

In four different attempts, I've tried F2, F12 as indicated on the bottom of my screen, and even DEL, and Enter to no avail

F2, F12, Enter, or delete unable to help boot the computer

ok it starts going

I am in the bios. What do Ido next?

I'm wondering whether your motherboard is damaged. If you really can't boot into the BIOS screen, you have problems.

Your first order of concern is to get the data off your hard drive. Try to install the drive in a second computer if you have one and see if it will boot. You might then be able to access that drive through another computer and copy the files you want to save to some other media, like DVDs or an external drive.

epshatto said:

I'm wondering whether your motherboard is damaged. If you really can't boot into the BIOS screen, you have problems.

Your first order of concern is to get the data off your hard drive. Try to install the drive in a second computer if you have one and see if it will boot. You might then be able to access that drive through another computer and copy the files you want to save to some other media, like DVDs or an external drive.

Click to expand...

OK nevermind.

Now that you're in the BIOS, you want to check the boot priority. Check to make sure your hard drive is set to the first boot device. There'll be some kind of screen you can go to where you can set that.

I've set the harddrive as first boot device, save and exit. But it is not booting still

You're right indeed. I will try recovering my files first and see for the booting issue next.

What if I try reinstalling the OS through an installation CD or any other external device?

Don't attempt to reinstall the OS at this point. First you should try an installation repair.

I'm not at all confident a repair will work in your case, but you should try it. Do you have the Windows installation disk? You can boot from that disk and attempt a repair from the Windows Recovery Environment. Before we do that though, let's try to see if you can access your hard drive from the command prompt. You need to re-enter BIOS, set your first boot device to CD/DVD, insert the Windows disk, and restart. Select the Command Prompt, and type the DISKPART command. It should tell you what drives it can see on your computer.

If the drive is detected, try the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands.

Like I said, I'm not sure at all this will help you but it's worth a shot.

You can use a linux live cd to help you recover the data Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer - How-To Geek