topic Operating System not found - help? in PCs & Accessories

Operating System not found - help?

huglazar — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:17:43 GMT

I have a Vaio VGN-AR71ZU running windows vista.

It was fine, then internet explorer just hung. Vaio became unresponsive. After waiting an hour for anything to happen, I pressed the power button for 5 seconds to shut it down.

I waited a minute and started it up, but now get a black screen with "Operating System not found".

Repeatedly pressing F8 to get tot windows safe mode does not work

Repeatedly pressing F10 to get to recovery screen does not work

I do not have Vista discs as the Vaio came preloaded.

I do not have a boot disc.

Does anyone know if there is anything I can download to an external hard drive to help me start up?

Operating System not found - help?

Blencogo — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:27:45 GMT

You can download a bootable Vista repair disc from here: -

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

This should boot from your Vaio's DVD Drive and you can run a repair.

If this repair fails you need to check your hard drive(s) as there may be a fault.

Operating System not found - help?

huglazar — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:38:28 GMT

Downloaded it and burned to cd, then booted laptop off of the disc.

It brought up a "Install Windows" screen.

If I proceed, its not going to lose any of the files on the laptop is it?

Operating System not found - help?

Blencogo — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:45:20 GMT

I don't think you can use this disc to install or reinstall Windows Vista. It is just a bootable repair disc.

Operating System not found - help?

huglazar — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:28:11 GMT

Ok, clicked install, got the screen with Startup Repair.

Ran Startup Repair and got:

Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically

Problem Signature:

Problem Event Name: StartupRepairV2

Problem Signature 01: ExternalMedia

Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.0.0.0.0

Problem Signature 03: 0

Problem Signature 04: 65537

Problem Signature 05: unknown

Problem Signature 06: NoHardDrive

Problem Signature 07: 0

Problem Signature 08: 0

Problem Signature 09: unknown

Problem Signature 10: 1168

OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1

Locale ID: 1033

WTF???

Does this mean my hardrive is gone?

This VGN-AR71ZU has 2 320GB drives with RAID 0

Would both be gone? Is there anyway to get them back?

Operating System not found - help?

Blencogo — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:13:47 GMT

Both discs act as a single Volume. If one drive fails - everything fails.

It would seem to be a hard drive fault. Can you see the hard discs in the BIOS? You should be able to access the BIOS screens by tapping F2 when you see the first Vaio logo when booting with the Repair Disc.

If the BIOS does not see the Hard Discs then you will need to replace them.

If the BIOS sees the discs it could possibly still be a corrupt SATA/RAID driver.

Operating System not found - help?

huglazar — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:02:28 GMT

The bios shows:

Hard Disk Drive 0: None

Hard Disk Drive 1: 320GB

This means that the 1st drive is gone/dead, right?

Is there any way to get the thing to boot off the 2nd drive? Or is that dead without the first one?

Any way to recover a dead drive? Or the data on the 2nd one?

Operating System not found - help?

Blencogo — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:12:07 GMT

If Drive 0 is dead then it will need to be replaced and you will probably have lost all data. Drive 1 is OK and can be reused but it will need to be reformatted along with the new drive. RAID 0 means your Vaio writes 'stripes' of data to one drive and then the other - so no one drive had all the data - they have half each in stripes of about 125MB. If your data is very important, have a word with a data recovery firm. This is an expensive operation - try Google. I take it you do not have any backups?

Clutching at straws I know, but there is one other possibility you can check. It is just possible that the hard drive interface connectors for Drive 1 may have become unplugged or are loose.

Check all the connections are good - you will need these diagrams to see where the connectors are situated.

Operating System not found - help?

huglazar — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:09:12 GMT

Thaanks for that. All connections fine.

The laptop was not bumped or dropped. Could it possibly be a corrupt raid driver?

Operating System not found - help?

Blencogo — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:00:22 GMT

I don't think so - if the BIOS cannot find it before the drivers are loaded it is almost certainly dead.

You may wish to contact one of Sony's Service Partners near to where you live for a second opinion. There is a full list here: -

http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/contacts/asc.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VGN-AR71ZU

Operating System not found - help?

pologolf — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:11:25 GMT

Hello i have the same problem with the same model of computer,it happened also end of february,so one day i got a message that one of the drive was failing,but i still was able to use it after it will restart on its own and run checkdesk

then one day checkdesk was only able to go til 30 % and stop

then i got the same message

OS NOT FOUND

but i still see both drives in the BIOS

i tried using vista repair disc or one ubuntu version and some sector errors shows

do you have an idea of what i can try?

Operating System not found - help?

aqdash — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:23:00 GMT

I also had this same problem but after alot of hustle i managed to escape from it by disabling the RAID drives but now i again want to enable RAID drives and get my system set to function fully as it was ment to. so please HELP to set up my system. As i have enabled my RAID drives it is giving me this error "Operating System not found" what should i do?

- Do i need to set RAID in a particular manner to make it work with operating system?

Please Help

Re: Operating System not found - help?

passwordreset — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 07:43:48 GMT

I turned on my laptop today and it randomly said operating system not found i turned it of turned it back on and pressed the f10 key i tried to reboot it and that wont work. At last, it was Windows Boot Genius helped me fix problem!