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Have a Hewlett Packard Pavillion running XP (I think). When I turn the power on I get the message "Operating System not found", and I can't get past it. What should I do?
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This site (http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm) gives you a variety of solutions for a wayward XP OS. A stab at fixboot/fixmbr might be the first attempt to revive XP, if your HP supplied cd allows, then a Repair install. Note that your data on the drive is at risk and a good backup was never more important then now.
Thanks for the advice...problem is I don't have a rescue or backup disk...the computer was given to me. Are there any free cd downloads that you're aware of?
your options now become Buy or Borrow for repair purposes. XP Home OEMs are around $90.
I've seen that message when the hard drive fails (are you sure that there's a hard drive in the computer?) as well as when the boot.ini file becomes corrupt. There is a copy of boot.ini named bootini.bak which may be accessible if you can borrow someone else's boot floppy (one for WIN 98 will work to get into the DOS screen) and copy bootini.bak to repair boot.ini. Or you can install a free OS to be found at LINUX.ORG/DISTRIBUTIONS and down load one of your choice.
I think you still can buy a "Restore Disk" from the HP website. I did so a couple of years ago for a friend who had misplaced her restore disk kit. That would allow you to restore the OS and all originally installed applications provided you have the OS Key (which in my friend's case was glued to the side of the case).
I had a similar problem with not being able to boot, which I think was caused by some old drivers (I was attempting a reinstall of a scanner and tried to run it without updating the drivers first). I was getting error message such as ''unmountable_boot_volume'' and ''the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems'' and ''cannot open the partition.'' Real scary stuff, especially since I hadn't made a recent backup of my financial files. I had gone to Microsoft's tech library and found some half-way useful articles on the fixboot and fixmbr commands ... but apparently I was using them in the wrong order! Pixiedust, your step by step instructions showed me the errors of my ways ... I am definitely saving your post in case this ever happens again. And you can be sure the first thing I am doing is a current file backup. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
not only was she offering a copy of her XP cd (even for troubleshooting, this is a no-no), but she also included a personal phone number in her post. No one should include email addresses in their messages unless they are prepared for a barrage of emails to show up (mostly spam), so use the profile instead...and definitely don't give out personal information such as your location and/or phone number.
TONI
Hp had a hard drive recall. The recall ended on December 31, 2004. My hard drive failed and I had to buy a new one. After I bought the new one, I had to reinstall the operating system. If you don't have any system disks that came with the computer, you'll have to go out and buy another operating system as well as a hard drive.
When buying a computer, always get system disks with it
Hope this helps.
They saved my bacon when I had a similar failure...turned out to be bad RAM. For $35 they will stay on the line with you forever and get your PC booted, if it happens again you can call back with the same case # and they'll do it all over again, well worth the $35 in my book. Good luck.
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