"No operating system" message

If that's the problem, then you can try to boot from a "Recue Disk" created by some Anti-virus suite, like McAfee, Trend, etc. If scanning the MBR, that'll be O.S. independent.

Just ask someone else to record that diskette for you. A memory-resident virus can fool antiviruses in many ways.

 

Hi all,

thanks for the suggestion about a possible virus infection, but it was not the case. I scanned the PC using a Rescue Disk created by Kaspersky Anti-Virus Program and it found nothing.

Now, I'm about to do a re-partition of my HDD and we'll see if it helps.

Thank you anyway for all valuable hints!!!

Ralf S.

 

Uff, problems are coming back!

I've removed the second disk before re-partitioning and installing two O/Ss: first Win2k and after that WinXP, but as the result of this I still can't boot from C:, because of the missing NTLDR file, although it is in C:. Having copied it from the bootable floppy which always works, didn't help.

I don't know what messes everything up?

RS

 

O.K., O.K..., let's come back to the roots, now that we have nothing to lose

Can you tell me this 2 things?

1-) Manufacturer Brand and Model of your H.D. And also it's size.
2-) Brand, Model and year of manufacture of your MotherBoard.
3-) Also, tell me: Did your P.C. booted O.K. before you installed XP?

I think now (as noted before) that your disk isn't necesarily damaged, but can be an issue related to "buggy and/or old B.I.O.S. ", that when used to partition certain disk sizes, it does O.K., but with little errors in size calculation.

 

Hi jmmf,

firstly, thanks for your efforts to help me out ...

Although my problem has for now been fixed, I'll anwer your questions:

1) My HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 20 GB
2) The motherboard is a rare one - TOTEM; year 1999, BIOS also 1999

3) The PC booted OK before - I have always had two OSs installed, e.g. WinMe and Win2000 and there were never problems.

After I had problems with booting the PC today because of the missing NTLDR file I searched for a solution on MS home page. I found this http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q314057 .
As the problem occurrs on FAT32 disks I've converted to NTSF and we'll see what happens. As of now it works ....

Thnx,

Ralf S.

 

Hi,

Are you sure the first partition is set to ACTIVE? Check with FDISK.

Cheers!