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Operating System Not Found

HardcoreRobot

HardcoreRobot

Lifer
A friend asked for some help. Said she just turned off her laptop, and when she turned it back on it gave the message. I looked at, and the hard drive is no longer being detected in BIOS. From what I could tell, the drive was NOT making any funny noises and sounded like it was operating normally. What could be the cause of this? I have not opened a laptop before, so I hesistate to see if the cabling has come loose (is there even cabling?).

If this is not something I should try on my own, what should I have her do. Its a 2 year-old Compaq purchased from CompUSA. She does not have the receipt. Where should I take this to have it fixed? Thanks for any advice!
 
If the drive isn't being detected by the BIOS it will be very difficult to find out what is wrong with it. It is possible that the drive is bad or just dirty or loose connectors.
Has it been used mainly in an air conditioned environment and not left outside too much--say in a car during rainstorms (high humidity)? It is possible that just unplugging the drive and plugging it back in might do it. A lot of machines have modular hard drives that are easily removed (one screw). look around on the bottom of the laptop for a hatch a little bigge than a deck of cards. That may be it. If you are careful, you might be able to do that.
Others have drives that slide out from one side or the other and are usually held in by one or two screws on the bottom or a sliding latch. If you can give me the model number by Private Mail, perhaps I could help you more.
.b.h.
 
Compaq laptops are notorious for this. My sister-in-laws did this on at least 5 different occassions. Problem is it was still under warranty and Compaq wouldn't address the issue becuase they kept calling it a software issue. Finally convinced them to take it back and it did the same thing when I got it back. Come to find out, all they did was restore the software!!!! Finally the warranty ran out and the issue still wasn't fixed, and compaqs stance was that it was out of warranty, even thought I had 3 open problem tickets that were unresolved. After a letter to the BBB in Texas, I got a call from compaq wanting to know what they "could do" to make it right. I sent them back the laptop. 2 months later I get it back. The processor and memory were changed. It has not had a problem since. Hope this helps! By the way, Radio Shack's in my area are authorized Compaq repair centers...
 
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