emachines laptop: can't find operating system

arcas

Platinum Member
Apr 10, 2001
2,155
2
0
Hi. Friend called me last night. Her laptop (an oldish e-machines athlon-based lappy) is having problems: she says her hard drive begins thrashing, the system slows down and eventually crashes and/or hangs. Upon immediately power-cycling, she gets the error "Can't Find Operating System". If she lets the laptop sit for an hour, it'll boot fine and 20 minutes later the same thing will happen. Last night as a test I had her set the laptop on her deck for a few minutes (it was 16F outside) and retry. As suspected, the laptop booted fine for about 15 minutes.

She says her windows event viewer shows no SMART errors or anything suggesting a hard drive problem.

The "Operating system not found" error along with the thrashing hard drive suggests her hard drive is going bad. But the hard drive failures I've experienced don't "recover" after letting the drives cool off for a while.

Is it possible that this is simply an overheating problem?

 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
22,034
872
126
make sure the HD is seated properly. I have seen many HD errors but was actually just a HD not properly seated. make sure all fans are working. If all seems ok, BACKUP ASAP!
 

Old Hippie

Diamond Member
Oct 8, 2005
6,361
1
0
Is it possible that this is simply an overheating problem?
Absolutely. I've had them do the same thing. Dead fan dontcha know. But it could also be just clogged.
 

LouPoir

Lifer
Mar 17, 2000
11,201
126
106
Might be overheating --

I would check the fan and make sure the vents are not all clogged up. And that the fan does spin up.

Lou