[triedeverything]

I have windows xp earlier today I went out & the computer was working fine,
when I returned the screen was dark like DOS & it said "operating system not found"
I powered down & rebooted & everything seems ok. I did a search & it appears this can be the start of a hard drive failure.
What should I do at this time to prevent the operating system not found message to return?

Thanks

EDIT....sorry posted this in vista by error, admin please move this to the XP forum.

Edited by triedeverything, 29 October 2008 - 04:31 PM.

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I would backup all your files onto DVD or an external USB hard drive as quickly as possible otherwise you will lose them if the hard drive fails completely.
You may want to back up your entire user folder in "Documents and Settings" rather than just "My Documents" if you want to keep all your old emails from Outlook or Outlook Express (along with some other stuff that I can't remember).
Do you have an XP installation disk, or a recovery disk? If not, you should have a recovery partition on the hard drive itself - if you do I suggest you use the pre-installed software to create a recovery disk.

[Triskaidekaphobia]

I would backup all your files onto DVD or an external USB hard drive as quickly as possible otherwise you will lose them if the hard drive fails completely.
You may want to back up your entire user folder in "Documents and Settings" rather than just "My Documents" if you want to keep all your old emails from Outlook or Outlook Express (along with some other stuff that I can't remember).
Do you have an XP installation disk, or a recovery disk? If not, you should have a recovery partition on the hard drive itself - if you do I suggest you use the pre-installed software to create a recovery disk.

[hfcg]

Hello.
Can you boot the machine?
If you keep getting the same error messege then your hard drive is toast.
I realy hope that you made backups of all your important data.

[triedeverything]

Do you have an XP installation disk, or a recovery disk?

This is my home computer so I don't have many files other than some software & photos.
I do have the recovery disk but thats what I would use at failure correct?
Is there anything I can do to prevent failure?
My concern right now is too avoid failure & recovery.

Can you boot the machine?

yes as I said in the first post I rebooted and everything appears fine.

Thanks

Edited by triedeverything, 29 October 2008 - 04:51 PM.