Operating System Not Found error on bootup

[Silent]

Anyways i get this computer from my friend, not really that old, Pentium 3 Gateway. Anyways, on startup i keep getting the error operating system not found. My first guess was windows was being screwy, so i went and got the windows OS disc ready to reinstall and format, etc. In the Windows XP install it tells me, No Hard Disk Drive is Presant. Immediately i assume that the hard drive was screwed up, so i put in another that worked on a different computer of mine, and it gave me the same error. Then recently i took the old HDD and stuck it in as a slave on my other pc and i could get my files and stuff not a problem to it. I really dont think it's a hardware failure, I think my bios is being screwy. I want to try to salvage this motherboard and chip, so if any of you could help it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Wojtek]

Check the IDE cable
It may be faulty

 

[Silent]

Checked that and put in a different one already, didnt work.

 

[Robert]

i would reset cmos (there is a jumper on the motheroard, it may be a different color - like red) and if that doesn't work, I would plug the hard drive in the Secondary IDE Port of the motherboard to determine if the Master IDE port is screwed up.

 

[Silent]

It was weird, the harddrive wasnt originally plugged directly into the motherboard, it had a PCI card with a IDE slot on it, but when i looked at the motherboard it has 2 IDE ports, one of which had the cd drive plugged into it, the other was empty, so i plugged the HDD into the empty one, still didnt work, then i tried putting the CD-ROM as a slave off of the HDD and plugging the hdd into the port the cd rom was in. Still didnt work. I might try resetting that cmos, where would i find it?

 

[Robert]

maybe that's why they had a the pci card? Because their onboard ide ports didn't work.

To reset cmost, you need to look on the motherboard for a jumper, it may be red, green, yellow or black. It'be titled "CMOS" there are two places to put it.. NORMAL and clear. Move it to "clear", turn the pc on (it wont turn on), then disconnect the power and put the jumper back to normal.

 

[Silent]

Well it was a gateway computer, having never been changed since i opened it, the card has always been in there. I dont think thats the reason.

 

[notnamed]

Checked for bent pins on the port I presume? Is it difficult to plug in an IDE cable? IDE cables should be very easy to plug in. Perhaps the cmos battery is old? They should last a loonng time, but you may want to check that

 

[Fuzzylogic]

simply go to your bios setting and go under 'standard settings' or something like that. then check to see if your hard drive being detected. if not, the highlight primany master or whatever you've got the hd under and hit 'enter' do detect the drive.

 

[XiaoTian]

Format the Hard disk,I think.

 

[stabme]

i got same problem on my comp. something odd happened, i think with memory, and on boot up occassionally said: "Operating System Not Found"... to fix that, just f8 until you get into the windows menu, and get into safe mode. reboot, and it should be fine.

although, my comp was thoroughly fubared. the slave hdd was unreadable, memory took too long to read, bootup was slow, and the same error would come up every day. but booting into safe mode should fix the problem..if its a one time thing. otherwise, bad hardware.