Sony Vaio pcg-k45 operating system not found.

So my Girlfriend has a sony vaio pcg-k45 that has ben broken for a good while now and i finaly got the parts i needed and fixed it but now when i boot it, it says operating system not found. Sounds like a hard drive issue to me, could it be something else??

If it is the HD then idk how I'm gonna fix it, we don't have any of the boot or recovery cd's for the laptop and seems impossible to find on ebay or anything. Is there another way to get the operating system back on here and get this thing back in working order??

Thanks..

-Joe-

-Laptop PC
-Pent 4
-Windows XP

 

Greetings, biogenesis...

More often than not, the dreaded 'operating system not found' message means hard drive failure...you might try some of the steps listed in this MS KB article, but without an XP cd, you're pretty limited as to what you can do...

You could always contact Sony support, see if they'll ship you a replacement set of disks...

 

I have contacted sony and they said to make sure the HD is being detected in bios. I'm not sure how this is done. They also said try pressing F10 durring boot to do a system recovery. I have tried this several times but nothing happens. I replied to sony with some of this info and still waiting on a reply. I highly doubt they'll send recovery disks lol!! Unless I pay a but load for them.

 

Upon reboot, press F2 or F3 before Windows starts to load - this should get you into BIOS (or Setup)...you should then be able to navigate to a list of drives recognized by your machine...

Be advised: changing any settings in BIOS could be catastrophic, if they're the wrong changes, so be careful - I would advise just looking to see if the hard drive is recognized...

Post back here with the results...

 

In advanced, there is; Primary IDE Adapter -NONE- Is this what I'm looking for and if so this means the HD is not being detected right? If so, I'm guessin the HD is fried, could it be something else?

 

Well, the primary IDE adapter should be there, although on some motherboards it won't if you're using SATA...on my machine (Dell Inspiron), the drives are listed under Standard CMOS Features as SATA-0 through SATA-3, and the drive appears under SATA-0 as an Hitachi 320gb...

If your drive isn't showing up, try forcing the BIOS to detect it - there should be a 'Manual' detect function...

If nothing you can do can make the BIOS recognize the drive, try shutting down and unplugging, take your case apart, and make sure the power cables and IDE ribbon cable are secure - you might even try replacing the IDE cable, if you can dig up a spare...

Disregard that: just realized you said you have a laptop...still, it might be worth trying to re-seat the hard drive, if possible...

 

I don't know if it's SATA.
I do not believe there is a 'Manual' detect function, but i will check. In bios right?
Ive taken the hard drive out and put it back in several times. No changes. But I guess it wont hurt to try a couple more times.

 

Yep, in BIOS...most laptop setups are pretty simple, so if you're not seeing the HD anywhere, that's probably a good indicator that the drive may be bad...

I had this same situation occur a while back on a customer's machine - I took the laptop to a local Best Buy, and they let me plug in a spare drive real quick, just to verify...you may be able to do the same...

 

The only things in bios that say anything about the HD is in advanced which i already posted. Also in boot. So going by this and what you said, the hd is probably at fault (bad) ? In this case the only thing i could do now is what you said about best buy but i don't think they'd do that for free, they charge like 300 dollars to even look at a pc and tell you whats wrong with it, I do believe if you got your pc from them they'd do what you mentioned for free, but that's the only way they would with out a huge fee. Sounds like i need a new HD though.. I wonder how much sony would charge to send me the HD along with any CD's and software id need.

 

I heard back from sony and they said they can't send me the HD, id have to ship them the laptop, that could be pretty costly. I have tried looking for the hd online, ebay and ect but I'm not coming up with anything, seem's kinda impossible to find.