Operating System Could Not Be Found... Help
 

I bought a used IBM T23 Laptop recently. PIII 1.13 Ghz, 512 RAM, 30 GB.

I installed Windows XP SP2 on it when I first got it. After that I installed Microsoft Office 2003, codecs, and other useful stuff. I shut it down for the day. When I turn it back on it gives me the message "Operating System Not Found" at start-up. I put in the Windows XP CD in, choose the repair optoion, it boots into windows. Everything I installed is there and even the file I saved with Microsoft Word is on the Desktop. I shut it off and turn it out again and it gives me the same "No Operating System" message. Any idea on how I can fix this?

Perhaps check the BIOS that you are actually booting off the hard drive.

The MBR might be messed up.

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It is set-up to boot from the hard drive. I checked twice. I'm looking at Slav's links right now.

Back in the day, I used to solve this problem mainly by ejecting the floppy that was still in the floppy drive... But I reckon you've already checked that, right?

Maybe the boot.ini file is corrupted....

Break out that XP cd again, and go to the repair console (hit R where it gives you the 3 options after everything is loaded).

Then do /fixmbr and /fixboot.

If something is fubar with the boot stuff, that will fix it.

Checked BIOS Boot order, checked floppy in the drive, checked boot.ini (it is perfect), did both fixboot and fixmbr. Nothing works. The OS only boots when the CD is in the drive, and displays the Operating System not found message when it is not in the drive. I guess re-installing is my only option.

Probably a reformat and reinstall.

Something in the registry is telling XP to load from the CD?

Is your bios battery dead? It might be not properly storing your drive settings in there. Are there any other boot time messages?

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

Well, the solution was painfully simple. It appears that if there is a "!" mark next to the device in the BIOS, that device will be disabled. In my case that was the hard drive. I had no idea until somebody pointed it out to me. Thank you all for help.