Resolving *Operating System Not Found* Error Message

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) are boot firmware that completely identifies tests and initializes computer system devices. To optimize the system performance, you should customize your BIOS settings. It largely depends upon how feature-rich your system BIOS is. Generally, BIOS of professional systems as of 3D Graphics Designers, Visual Effects creators and above all extreme Gaming workstations is far more feature-rich and customizable than standard systems. However, changes made in system BIOS can result as serious issues if they are not configured properly. In most cases, the outcome of an improper change in system BIOS settings results as an error message (viz. inappropriate boot sequence configuration). Such error messages further result as unbootable system and even partition corruption due to repetitive hard disk scans of CHKDSK. It causes complete inaccessibility of your critical data. In such situations, for complete restoration of affected partition's data, you need to format the partition and use updated data backup to restore the lost files. In case of no backup availability, Partition Recovery software comes to rescue.

You may encounter the below error message when you attempt to start your Windows XP based computer:

"Operating system not found."

You receive another error message when you try to repair the operating system using Recovery Console as:

"Setup did not find any hard drives installed on your computer."

After any of the above error messages appears, the booting process gets halted and files saved in the hard drive become inaccessible.

Cause:

• Few main reasons for the occurrence of above error messages are:
• System BIOS does not detect the hard drive.
• The hard disk or the hard drive partition is damaged.
• Sector 0 of the physical hard disk drive has an incorrect or malformed Master Boot Record (MBR).
• A damaged or corrupted hard drive partition is marked as Active.
• A hard drive partition that contains the MBR is no longer Active.

Solution:

To resolve the problem and access the hard drive data, you need to follow these steps:

• Check the floppy disk drive and remove the floppy inside it (if any).
• Check the boot sequence in system BIOS. If the primary hard drive does not show up within the first three boot devices, it means that the hard drive has been corrupted.
• Use the fixmbr command in the Windows XP Recovery Console to repair the MBR.

However, if all the above steps fall short to resolve the issue, the best option available is to perform a clean operating system reinstall in the same partition. A clean reinstall of the operating system erases all data from the partition. In such data loss situations, you should use advanced Partition Recovery Software.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most efficient Partition Recovery tool. It provides complete recovery and restoration of lost files in all possible cases of logical data loss. It is compatible with FAT16, FAT32, vFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems. This read only Partition Recovery Software supports Windows Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000.

Author discussed on configuration of bios and causes of occurrence error messages .In case of data loss due to problems in bios, author suggested partition recovery software because Author doing research on partition recovery. She has tried this software on her system for recovery of partition data. For More information on partition recovery visit http://www.partitionrecovery-software.com