Computer lost OS?

hay and not usre if this is in the right section but i need some help here,

yesterday my sisters laptop got the blue screen of death saying there was a hardware malfuction, so she shut it off and left it alone till this afternoon.

when she finally asked me for help the computer was getting to the WIndows is loading now screen, and it wouldnt go any further. after trying to boot the computer several times, in safe mode/last know good load up, im getting nothhing but thw ords "Operating System NotFound" and its not doing anything.

im under the beliefe that the hd is dead but dont have any extra hds to hook up to it to see if i am correct.

she is running windows xp home sp2 well was..

can any one reccomend anything to do or any fixes that are possible with out throwing the computer in the trash?

 

Seagate has a good harddrive diagnostic program you could try that will tell you if your harddrive is good or bad.

Seatools Desktop

you will need a formatted floppy disk to put it on.

be sure to use the quick scan first or whatever its called. i dont remember been a while since i used the program.

i hope this helps and you get the problem resolved.

 

i would use that but the laptop doesnt even seem to be able to get any where, also the laptop doesnt have a floppy drive and our external frive isnt installed on the pc

when i say it doesnt seem to be able to get any where all it does is either freeze on a black screen, go to a screen saying things along the lines of your os want able to load properly and tried to boot on the default settings, or last but not least, it askes me to try and boot in safe mode which it doesnt do, it just freezes when i hit enter on it. so....

 

It is possible that the drive is going bad. Missing OS, can be a bad drive, sectors, MBR, and at the worst the Bios or IDE controller is going bad.

How old is the laptop in question?

 

um the laptop is about if i remember right something around 1.5 years old

 

Get a S.M.A.R.T. utility (can be downloaded for free), and see if the drive is having problems. I just replaced my 40gb that was about 2yrs old due to it would start showing "Missing os" and would not load with a new Seagate 60gb, and have not had problems since.

 

can u give me links plz

 

i dont know if this is what browniz is talking about or not

http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/

you can try that or you can wait for browniz to post a link. Ive never used this program before so i dont know anything about it.

 

DriveSMART is a good one http://www.download.com/DriveSMART/3000-2248_4-10393139.html?tag=lst-0-4, plus it is free. ActiveSMART is another one which is good, which I have used.

Check the harddrive manufacturers website, Seagate, Maxtor, IBM, Fujitsu all have tools that can be burned to a disc as a ISO that will diagnose most problems if the drive is starting to act up.

Also all laptops have harddrive tools built into the bios that should help also

 

cant even make it to the bios but i willl check those programs out as well as get some more help from other ppl thnx

 

If you are not able to get to the Bios, then it is possible the machine is toast.

 

ya i just talked to a computer tech friend the mother board is dead so pretty much the laptop is trashed