"error loading operating system"

queenlives

queenlives

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one of our sony vaio xp sp3 os laptops is giving me this error. no amount of powering down / restarting, etc is helping.

googling "error loading operating system" i find http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz/troubleshoot.html with what appears to be a fix. googling "bootmaster" i see a fair number of threads in various places indicating satisfaction with their solution. i'm about to head down that path this morning but would appreciate feedback / suggestions from any of you very knowledgeable techies on the top 3 things you'd do to resolve this.

thx in advance.
hal
 
The computer's BIOS is not finding the hard disk... either it's completely toast, or there's a cable loose, or the boot partition is corrupt. It can be many different things.

Enter the computer's BIOS, try to autodetect the drive, and see if anything shows up.

If yes, then you could boot off your windows install CD, run the recovery console and do a FIXMBR or fixboot
 
Last edited:
0ctan3 said:
The computer's BIOS is not finding the hard disk... either it's completely toast, or there's a cable loose, or the boot partition is corrupt. It can be many different things.

Enter the computer's BIOS, try to autodetect the drive, and see if anything shows up.

If yes, then you could boot off your windows install CD, run the recovery console and do a FIXMBR or fixboot
Click to expand...

thx very much, i'll give your suggestion a try this morning.
 
try booting from the windows cd, selecting recovery option, and rebuilding the master boot record.
 
If the hard disk is dead, then you're in for a reinstall after you replace the hard drive...

but there are a few utilities that you can try to repair the master boot record to recover the drive..

Google for Bart's PE Builder ISO and burn it to a CD... then boot onto it and choose option #6 and then choose option #6 again. This will boot into a live CD of sorts and you can choose from the start menu "recover master boot record (MBR)"...

Or you can try and save some of the data off the disk this way as well.

Good luck!
 
just back from meetings and saw these new posts - thx guys, i'll give them a shot and will report back.

hal
 
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