OS not found...

[flenn]

I'm trying to gather some thoughts on what this problem may be. I'm helping my neighbor troubleshoot an intermittent "OS not found" error on their 2 year old Emachines. First I replaced the cable, no luck. Then, a virus scan with the latest Norton defs found "JSseeker" (the file was quarantined and deleted). This virus affects IE and shouldn't have had anything to do with a boot problem. Next, I started focusing on the HD. The HD is on the loud side and I was able to hear whether it would spin during startup. After hitting the power button, I'd listen for the drive to spin. When it didn't spin, sure enough, I'd get the error. When it did spin, it'd launch WinME like there wasn't even a problem. So, based on the fact that the HD would intermittently not spin, I assumed it was failing. I replaced the drive two days ago and ghosted their old HD to the new one. I powered it up about 10 time in a row, and all was fine...or so I thought. Today my neighbor tells me that they just got the OS not found error. At this point, I feel it can only be a power supply problem, or a mobo problem. Assuming the new HD is not spinning at startup (I haven't been able to verify this because I don't have the machine), my guess is that it's not getting adequate power, or the signal from the mobo/bios that tells it to spin, is not doing it's job. Is there anything else that I may have overlooked?

 

[IamDavid]

Have you tried switching the Power cable or just the IDE? If so it sounds to me like the motherboard is bad.