[Tim'A]

My brother and I recently "upgraded" our families painstakingly slow Sony VAIO (From the year 2000, with Windows ME installed) to a less-slow eMachines computer. We found the eMachine computer in the garbage on the side of the road. We were hoping for a hard drive inside (we are out of HDD space at home!), but to no avail. But I digress, whenever the computer starts up from a cold boot, it gives the message Operating System Not Found. The only way to work around this is to enter the CMOS setup, and exit. The system then boots up normally (WinXP installed). I have told my family members to just put the PC into standby mode, which has kept the computer working apparently. Still, this problem really annoys me, and I hope that you wise fellows will help me.

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Got to have a hard drive if the PC finally loads and operates with Win XP. Go back into the BIOS and see what the boot sequence is. May not be set to boot from the hard drive at power on.

[Major Payne]

Got to have a hard drive if the PC finally loads and operates with Win XP. Go back into the BIOS and see what the boot sequence is. May not be set to boot from the hard drive at power on.

[Tim'A]

Yeah it has a hard drive, forgot to add that lol. Sorry it took a week to reply. I went into the BIOS setup, looked around for a long time, and I found no boot sequence option. I was angry and surprised at the same time. So, I have no idea what to do.

[wannabe1]

Hello Tim'A...

If you have to reset the CMOS in order to boot, it's likely a dead CMOS battery (motherboard battery). Replacing that may well fix your machine.

wannabe1