No Operating System Found

I am working on a HP PC with an ME OS
900 Mghz AMD Duron
40 Gb HD (1 Gb used)
128 Mb Ram

Here's the problem....
When I got this thing they couldnt even boot up
It would get to the ME screen and shut down

I went in via safe mode (wanted to go in via c: and do a scandisk first but would not give me any options other than safe mode) went back to a restore point 2 months ago, and then began Uninstalling the MYRIAD of games her kid downloaded.

There were at least 40 that I uninstalled and a few other programs that were adware (search bars - several - for their browser)

Everything was going swimingly until I decided to try to install my Thumb drives that house all of my little utilities, and then it started.... on every boot up..... NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND. The USB ports were not recognizing the Thumb Drives so I installed the software.... then the problem began......

The only way I can get in now is to rapidly and repeatedly hit F10 and it goes right into (after about a 2 minute pause) ME.

Then ran Ad-Aware and Spybot and got rid of 460 items (most I've seen yet).
Each time I did anything I always rebooted.
Ran her McAfee and no virus.

Ran a complete Scandisk and Defrag also (during defrag I got a message that I needed to Scandisk again - said no and continued with the defrag)

Now it's running quickly (unlike before) but I still can not get in without the rapid hitting of the F10 key.

Does anyone have any suggestions (short of reformatting the HD - that's the last resort).

Flummuxed In Florida
Linda

 

i agree with you that scandisk might be the way to go. you might want to get a bootable linux distro and do a drive integrity scan

 

Operating System Not Found is a Master Boot Record message. Its having trouble reading the bootsector, sounds like. Aside from whats mentioned above, I would try the command sys c: from a bootdisk.

IntelKlaz101 , making a great first impression there, bud.

 

I would also use fdisk to make sure that the correct partition is set to active.

 

Adrynalyne is correct that the error message is caused by a boot record problem. However, the sys command will not touch the Master Boot Record at all (I believe it creates the volume boot record, but that's wholly separate). To fix that, you will need to run "fdisk /mbr".

More info on that command:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...pport/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1

 

I think, and I might be wrong Da Chicken, it means the MBR cannot find a bootsector, which may or may not be a problem with the MBR itself. When looking at the MBR in a hex editor, this message shows up.

Thats why I mentioned sys c: to rewrite the bootsector. And to check the active partition as well.

 

I think you're right Adrynalyne.

The documentation and information on this area is so slim, it makes it very difficult to simply check Google to make sure you're right (something I've gotten used to doing for everything else).