Missing Operating System message on a laptop

[Marcos]

I swapped hard drives on it, to one double the size at 40GB. Installed a fresh XP straight onto it (not the recovery disks). Most of it worked fine except I just could not get the speakers/audio to work.

But since the person who uses the laptop listens to a lot of music on it i need to get the audio working, either that or start again by installing the original Win2k Pro recovery discs (with working audio) and then upgrading to XP (which worked before on the old HD).

So i ran out of patience and did the latter, recovered the system, and then at the end it says recovery complete, please eject cd and press any key to restart. I do so. But when it restarts it immediately displays a "Missing Operating System" message and thats it.

I repeated the recovery process, same story, discs used to work fine on old 20GB drive, XP alone worked fine on 40GB drive, Recovery then XP upgraded worked perfect on old drive, so not sure what to do.

To keep it short, how do i fix a Missing OS?

[plesuvius]

You might need a newer version of Win2k to address the drive as it's a bigger size. As you have a bespoke 2k recovery CD, its not likely you can slipstream an SP onto the recovery CD, so there may not be an easy way around this other then using some drive image software or whatever to mess about resizing partitions or copying them from one HD to another (too much hastle).

Here's an idea; check the laptop documentation or the manufacturer's website for the make and model of the audio hardware, then install the drivers for it onto a windows XP install? Windows update may also offer drivers for common audio hardware. I would put XP back on it, then spend some time getting the audio working again, its the best option in the end....


Good luck!

[Marcos]

I did try all the audio drivers for the device that i could find, but none of them worked, which is strange as i'm sure they worked before when upgrading to XP normally.

[Marcos]

Does anyone else have any ideas? I need to fix this by tomorrow night

[peterb]

If you still have the originl 20Gb hard drive, (and it still works OK (test it to make sure there isn't some obscure hardware fault that has developed)install both the original and new in a normal PC (ypu will have to use adapters to convert the pinouts to ide) and use imaging software like drive2drive to create a clone of the 20Gb drive on the new 40Gb drive. www.fssdev.com/products/drive2drive/

The actual problem could be a problem with the boot loader on the disk that is not updating correctly, but it is odd that it works with Win2k (one of MS's better operating systems!) but the *grade to XP fails. Any error messages from the XP install procedure?

[Ravens Nest]

Give this link a look someone on here had a similiar problem.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33826659

[Marcos]

Hmm, his problem was solved by a jumper, but laptop drives don't have jumpers , none that i can see anyhow

[Marcos]

Ok cured the missing OS, now i have a bigger problem, a big fat BSOD when i try to start up Win2k:



It boots ok in safe mode but i can't upgrade to XP from safe mode

[peterb]

Laptop drtives do have jumpers, but they are not usually installed as the drive is almost invariably a master - few laptops have slave drives.

What did you do to get the OS recognised? Does it still boot OK off the 20G drive?

[Marcos]

Laptop drtives do have jumpers, but they are not usually installed as the drive is almost invariably a master - few laptops have slave drives.

What did you do to get the OS recognised? Does it still boot OK off the 20G drive?

Didn't try the old drive as the laptop is a superslim and tough to get inside of, but i was told to try fix the master boot record from the recovery console and it worked.

I'm tight on time (laptop needs to fly with my sister in 8 hours abroad) so i've gone back to trying a fresh XP and trying more audio drivers.


At the very least she'll have a sound-less XP but the sound really is a high priority to get back or else her music is useless.

[peterb]

If it is urgent and she must have sound, re-fit the old drive and get a USB enclosure for the 40Gb - at least she will have both an operating laptop and additional storage space. Definitely sounds like a driver problem though (No pun intended - sorry!)_

[Marcos]

The old drive was making occasional loud clicks and was a noisy beast, so i didn't want her to go abroad with it. Too late now, she left this morning with XP and no sound ,

I tried for hours, really annoying, the sound thing makes no sense, its worked before on XP as i used to have an identical laptop to hers on XP and it had drivers.

Oh well, thanks for your help