[Harley]

My laptop froze last week, since then it won't start up. All I get is the initial copyright text then "Operating system not found" below it.
Over the next few days it would sometimes load up, but would always freeze or blue screen eventually - the details on the blue screen would vary, I noticed something about 'kernal' though. Now it won't load up at all, stuck on the copyright screen.
It's an old refurbished IBM running XP. If someone could tell me what's wrong with it, and if it can be fixed, I'd appreciate it.

[trip]

Sounds like your harddrive is going to sh*t.

Edit:
forgot to mention that yes it can be fixed. Might be a pain in the ass but it can be fixed. How much stuff do you need to save is a pretty big factor. If you can get by with starting fresh you can just get a new harddrive and install an OS. If you need to save stuff from your failing drive you will need to invest in an enclosure for the [bad] drive that you have removed/replaced. That enclosure will let you treat your old laptop harddrive like an external usb drive - that way you can transfer over your sh*t.

Keep in mind that your drive may be shot and you may not be able to save everything(or anything).

That fact that it boots sometimes is a good sign.



Something you may want to try in the meantime:
Next time it boots set it up to do a disk repair on next bootup. You can do that by 'my computer' -> right click your harddrive -> select 'properties' -> select 'tools' tab -> hit the check for errors button. It will tell you that it can't do it now and ask if you want to run it on next reboot. If you don't feel like clicking all those you can just type 'chkdsk /f' in your run box from the start menu. Then reboot and hope your laptop sees the drive and runs the checkdisk dealie.



This post has been edited by trip on Saturday, Dec 29 2012, 17:47

[Harley]

Long overdue update, I took the laptop in to a repair shop to confirm the problem, who also said I needed a new drive. So I bought one.
I was so happy when I put the new drive and xp disc in and booted up, until suddenly "windows couldn't find any hard drives".
If I check the boot device list, about 95% of the time no hard drive comes up. I've tried this on all jumper settings, with the old drive, the new drive, and another drive - even the old one sometimes pops up on the device list. But it doesn't matter because by the time windows tries to install, it's gone again.

So maybe it wasn't the drive at all. What could be the problem?

[nightwalker83]

Have you tried reinstalling XP?

[Harley]

Reinstall on what?
I'm saying the drive is almost never detected by the BIOS. On the rare occurrence the laptop finds it, windows never detects it.

[nightwalker83]

QUOTE (Harley @ Saturday, Feb 2 2013, 18:52)

Reinstall on what? I'm saying the drive is almost never detected by the BIOS. On the rare occurrence the laptop finds it, windows never detects it.

Ah ok! I thought it might be the operating system that was the problem.

[trip]

QUOTE (Harley @ Saturday, Feb 2 2013, 04:22)

Reinstall on what? I'm saying the drive is almost never detected by the BIOS. On the rare occurrence the laptop finds it, windows never detects it.

I was going to look up your laptop model, but you didn't reference it.

All in all it doesn't sound very promising.
Are you comfortable opening the laptop? Sometimes there is a connecting cable from the HD housing to the motherboard - check to see that didn't get loose.

[Trund]

Could be a boot loader problem, I had this one time with Windows 7 after installing another Windows version. It said OS not found even though it was on the HDD, I fixed this via the repair tool on the Windows CD.

Here's a guide on how to fix it for XP, it might work or might not, but it's worth a try (it's also very easy):

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproble...pairbootini.htm

[Harley]

Trund I have tried several times to use the repair tool on the disc, but I get the same sh*t about windows not detecting a hard drive.

trip, it's an IBM T43. I'm comfortable opening it up, I have had a little look around and everything seems intact and kosher to me.
Apparently T43's are prone to southbridge chip problems, mainly due to that area getting way too hot and it f*cks with the soldering. Which makes so much sense because the laptop used to get real toasty in that particular area.

I'm determined not to give up on this laptop. Would a new motherboard save it? I have a brand new hard drive, if I get a replacement motherboard then am I right in thinking that everything would be fixed? Or is there another component or something I'm forgetting that could still be causing this problem?

[Trund]

Just to make sure, you specifically tried the boot loader fix, manually? Because the automatic repair tool doesn't fix the boot loader.

Also, getting a new mainboard CAN work, but it doesn't have to depending what the problem is. You mentioned you have a new brand new hard disk, sometimes old mainboards have really old BIOS Firmware as well that can lead to trouble with newer hard disks.

Usually a laptop mainboard is quite expensive and therefore most of the time a replacement can't be recommended, especially if it's not sure whether it will fix the actual problem. It's a risk that you can take, if you want to, but no one will be able to tell you whether it will work or not.

[Harley]

Well I say brand new, it's dated to 2008. But unused.

It looks like I can pick up a new board for around £50 which isn't bad. If it is in fact a loose chip it'll cost twice that to get it resoldered anyway.

I'm going to try and get my hands on an IBM/Lenovo bootable pc doctor CD before I buy a motherboard. What I'm asking now is if we assume the motherboard is perfect, and the hard drive is perfect, is there any way I could still have problems detecting the drive?

[Trund]

If the motherboard and HDD are both perfect then there's only one possibility left, the RAM. The BSOD fits to a RAM problem, but the "OS not found" message doesn't, so I'd assume that the BSOD comes from the motherboard/HDD.

It would of course be an advantage if you could find a way to test another HDD with your laptop to further locate which of the two is causing the problem.