Simviation Forums

"Operating System Missing" is all my computer will do for me now.  I had installed the new nVidia beta drivers, and everything was going great, but every now and then I would get artifacts and FS would freeze, so I decided to roll-back my video drivers because the old ones worked fine.  Once I did the installation of the old drivers, I needed to restart, so I did, and once I did, it all fell apart.  It restarted, but would not boot, so I turned it off, waited, and turned it back on, and it would POST, then tell me "Operating System Missing".  It still says I have a RAID array set up, and that all the components are working like they should, just that the OS is missing.  Is there anything I can do, or am I up a creek?  

Thanks for any help.

I typed "Operating System Missing" in Google & this is the first thing that showed up. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321626

Any help?

Sit in the corner and cry?, I'm not sure, sure sucks though, hope you can get it working again

Thanks Doug, I tried that too but was in no mood to try and sort through it and do anything about it.

Oh well, tomorrow maybe.  Nothing to do now but laugh about it.


"Operating System Missing" - really?  I just saw it no more than a minute ago.  Odd.  

Do you happen to have a pendrive plugged in or the bios set up to boot from the cd-rom drive? That can also cause the "Operating System Missing" message.

I have seen this happen with some SATA and RAID drivers, and, the setting "Aggressive Write Caching" enabled.

Assuming the disk is found by the BIOS on boot and it errors trying to boot Vista, try to use the recovery option on the Vista DVD

This error is typical of either a bad hard drive, a bad cable, bad motherboard controller or some type of file corruption associated with a virus or the setting I mentioned above. A driver change-over would not have caused this unless it was some type of drive 'controller' update taking place. The video driver going in and out won

If you bought a laptop at a store or online and you've had it for about 3-9 months, then your "Vista Trial" has expired. Buying laptops (NOT desktops) from certain retails come with a trial, not the real thing. You should have a professional check it out and if the HD is ok, then you need to buy Vista (preferred version). I was told this by an OfficeMax sales associate. Also saw it happen. Black screen of doom with OS not found in bold letters. Poor pink Sony Vaio. Never stood a chance.

Edit: This probably isn't the case but be aware.

Check your BIOS settings and make sure you have RAID enabled. (that is if your running RAID)

This happens to me when I have my pc torn apart and put it back together, BIOS will go back to normal so I have to go in and enable RAID and all is well again.

Check your BIOS settings and make sure you have RAID enabled. (that is if your running RAID)

This happens to me when I have my pc torn apart and put it back together, BIOS will go back to normal so I have to go in and enable RAID and all is well again.

That is exactly what I just did.  I was going to try and boot from the Vista DVD and I had to change the boot device priority in BIOS, and I noticed that RAID was disabled on Channels 0 and 1 for some reason.  I have no idea what disabled RAID, but that fixed it.

Stupid computers.

First time it happened had me stumped for hours.
Now the BIOS is the first thing I check before firing it up after working on it. And most times the RAID is disabled, must be some default thing happening

Stupid computers.

While they are stupid, they can never replace good old human stupidity

Stupid computers.

While they are stupid, they can never replace good old human stupidity

Everything is stupid.  Time to get back to stupid homework, so I can graduate from this stupid school.  I wish I wasn't so stupid, then this stupid homework would go a lot faster.

Check your BIOS settings and make sure you have RAID enabled. (that is if your running RAID)

This happens to me when I have my pc torn apart and put it back together, BIOS will go back to normal so I have to go in and enable RAID and all is well again.

That is exactly what I just did.

Stupid computers.

While they are stupid, they can never replace good old human stupidity

Everything is stupid.  Time to get back to stupid homework, so I can graduate from this stupid school.  I wish I wasn't so stupid, then this stupid homework would go a lot faster.

True...LOL...