Posted by Ralph on April 16, 19101 at 06:03:37:
In Reply to: DAN Re: Operating system not found posted by DAN on April 09, 19101 at 16:23:19:
Dan, here's something to add to that vast storehouse of knowledge you maintain! The surprising final cause of the "operating system not found" error message turned out to be the low power output of my power supply (only 110 watts). I had already tried your ideas, when a friend of mine who builds computers offered to take a look at the situation. When he tried to install his own copy of Windows 98 on my hard drive it wouldn't install correctly, so he checked the power supply, noted the low output, and tried the new hard drive in a system he had with a 250 watt power supply, and it functioned properly. He transferred all my hardware into a new, larger case with a 300 watt power supply, and now it works fine. I'm not sure I understand why, but that solved the problem.
: THIS MAY NOT BE IT,BUT MOST OF THE TIME
: WHEN I COPY A HD OVER I HAVE TO USE A BOOT DISK
: [SAME OPERATING SYSTEM] WITH SYS.EXE ON IT.
: THIS IS LOCATED IN C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND,,
: BOOT WITH THE FLOPPY AND TYPE SYS C: [SPACE
: INBETWEEN SYS AND C:
: TRY TO MAKE THE NEW ONE WORK BY IT'S SELF,,
: ALSO DID YOU MAKE PARTITION ACTIVE IN FDISK AFTER
: FDISKING IT,,THINK YOU CAN STILL DO THIS WITHOUT
: MESSING UP YOUR PARTITIONS,,THIS IS OPTION 2 FROM FDISK
: DAN
:
: : Just installed a new Quantum Fireball Plus AS 30gb hd in my HP Pavilion PII/400 PC. Had an existing 9.6gb Quantum Bigfoot that was giving me a SMART imminent failure message. Followed instructions from HP to add the new hd as slave, and used a new (24") 80 conductor cable. Ran FDISK, formatted the new hd, copied the files from the old hd, then switched the jumpers and the connectors to make the new hd the master and the old one the slaeve. Got the message "operating system not found", so I disconnected the old hd completely, attached the master connector to the new hd, set the jumper for DS (got the same result setting the jumper for CS), and still get the same error message. BIOS shows the new hd as the primary master, but when I run the HP Recovery program I get an error message that says no hard drive present. Even when I use the old cable and the old hd, disconnecting the new hd, I still get the same message--"operating system not found". Have I screwed things up royally, or what?