Operating System Not Found

**asking79** · February 11th, 2008, 06:29 PM

Hey all,

I have a problem with a computer I have. I have an HP Pavilion x1963 with Windows XP. I switched the cd drive for a recordable/rewritable cd drive and now it says Operating System Not Found. I have since switched back the old drive in hopes that somehow some way that would fix it but nope. The computer was working great before the cd drive change. I also do not have an XP disk, or a way to get one. Also if you could please be as detailed as possible about a solution. If you need more info please let me know. And thank you very much in advance.

**Ferrit** · February 11th, 2008, 08:36 PM

Well there are a number of possibilities
1: You dislodged the flat grey ide cable for the harddrive on the motherboard
2: In the bios the proper boot drive has been bumped out of first place.
Recheck all cables and remove the cable from the cdrom totally and then try to boot first

**MobilePCPhysician** · February 11th, 2008, 09:50 PM

Hp's typically use a cable to determine master and slave. Make sure the jumper on the back of the cd you put in the computer matches the location of the old one. Your choices would be ma, for master, sl, for slave, and cs, for cable select. I think you would need to set it to cs.

look at the back of the drive. You will see the jumper just to the left of where the flat ribbon cable plugs in.

**C6H12O6** · February 12th, 2008, 08:37 PM

Lets hope you didnt delete any boot files...

like boot.INI or NTLDR from your root directory. That would be bad. Meaning if you didnt have a repair disk or recovery disk you would have big concerns. Lets just hope its a hardware problem.

**asking79** · February 15th, 2008, 02:17 PM

Thanks for the responses. Sorry for the delay in my resopnses.

I did check the cables and that did get it working, it's just that after I restarted it it stays on a blue screen with an HP logo.
Anyone know how to fix that? Before I restarted it, it was running great.

**NooNoo** · February 15th, 2008, 02:55 PM

Sounds like the bios setup wants you to go in and reset the defaults. Have you tried pressing F1 to go into bios?

**asking79** · February 15th, 2008, 03:22 PM

Yeah, I can get to BIOS but I don't know what to do in there so I don't want to mess anything up. Any recommendations on what to do in there?

**NooNoo** · February 15th, 2008, 04:26 PM

JUst go in and then save and exit.... often that's all it needs. You might want to check the date and time while you are at it.

**asking79** · February 16th, 2008, 09:08 AM

Well, now I'm having difficulty getting into BIOS, it just says "ENTERING SETUP..." but it never enters setup. Any ides that might help?

**deepblu** · February 16th, 2008, 08:22 PM

Sounds like the new CD drive may be the culprit here.
Have you tried taking the drive out of the equation?
Power down the pc, unplug (power,data) the CD drive.

While your in there, verify that the hard disc that is coupled with the CD drive is set to master.
If it boots ok, check your bios settings (save default), power down and check the jumper for the CD drive - should be set to slave.
Then reconnect the CD drive, power up, go into the bios and make sure the bios detects the drives properly and that they are in the correct boot order.

Hope this helps.

Oh and, Welcome!

**asking79** · February 20th, 2008, 08:23 PM

I'm sorry, but can you give me a more detailed step by step for all that?

Thank you.

**CCT** · February 20th, 2008, 08:35 PM

'I also do not have an XP disk, or a way to get one.'

So, you are saying this comp has a 'restore partition'?

Because a legit install disk CAN be replaced.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;326246

**asking79** · February 20th, 2008, 08:45 PM

What I mean is that this computer was pre-owned and did not come with a disk and I haven't the money to purchase one. It is a computer that I recieved from my father in law and he has no disk for it either. He said he didn't remember it coming with one, but he bought it back in 2001 and he had Best Buy get it started for him before taking it home so it may be that they mistakenly didn't put it back in the box or that it did not come with one. Anyhow there isn't one, and I can't afford to purchase a new one. The computer worked fine until I tried putting in a new disk drive though and I made sure I hooked everything in the way it was initially so I don't see how that would make the computer not work. I've never had this problem before.

**CCT** · February 20th, 2008, 09:13 PM

If you have been able to get updates over the net, then MS$ sees (saw) your install as legitamite.

Thus, if you have the Certificate of Authenticity label number you can use that link I gave to get a replacement copy of the install disk.

Or, so I believe.

**deepblu** · February 21st, 2008, 07:24 PM

Completely disconnect the new CD drive and restart the PC.
If the machine boots, then you have a starting point for troubleshooting.
If it does not boot, but gets through the post, we can start there.