[wkd_chick]

Please help. I have a dell latitude D600 and it has windows xp professional. when I start it up the dell screen loads and then it says error loading operating system. I would restore the system but I don't have the disc anymore. I wanted to restore it before this error happened anyway but couldn't find a way to do it without a floppy disc drive which I also don't have. Can anyone please help me?? I did go into the bios system and saved the settings and tried to start up again but that didn't work and I also tried to start it in safe mode and it just came up with the same message "error loading operating system".

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Is that the full error, if so that sounds like it might be more hardware related VS software related. Hardware issues liek harddrive failure and Controller failure can cause that kind of error. When you go Into the BIOS does the hard drive show up?

[Alis Volat Propiis]

Is that the full error, if so that sounds like it might be more hardware related VS software related. Hardware issues liek harddrive failure and Controller failure can cause that kind of error. When you go Into the BIOS does the hard drive show up?

[wkd_chick]

yes it does, well what shows up is in this order are ...

diskette drive
internal hdd
usb storage device
cd/dvd/cd-rw drive
modular bay hdd
cardbus NIC
D/Dock PCI slot NIC
Onboard NIC

the enabled ones are the top four in the list

[wannabe1]

Hello wkd_chick...

What operating system is on the machine you are on now? If it's XP, has SP3 been installed?

We may be able to utilize another disk to have a look at your broken machine, but we need to determine how best to burn the disk we need.

wannabe1

[Alis Volat Propiis]

On one of the pages it should give you indepth information about your system like amount of RAM and Drive information. The list you are seeing there is the Boot device list, which doesn't neccisarly tell you if the hard drive is being recognized properly. Look for the detailed information, like your cd rom, it will show up as Liteonxxxxx or XXdvdrom it depends on the bios and the brand of drive, but there in that same place it should list Hard disk info most likely just the model number like ST380011a (example of Seagate) or HD08hj (example of samsung). That is what will tell you if its being recognized. also see if your bios has a diagnostic tab or page, and includes a hard drive test. Most Dells do.

[wkd_chick]

ok, I have vista ultimate as I am on my pc

[wkd_chick]

new user you are confusing me. I have done the diagniostics test and all was ok

Edited by wkd_chick, 07 November 2008 - 03:35 PM.

[wannabe1]

Let's see if we can get a look at the drive using Recovery Console.

Download RC.iso and burn it to a cd as an ISO image. It's important that this is burned as an image...it will not work if burned any other way.

If you don't have burning software, you may need a burning tool like ISO Recorder to do this...be sure to get the version for the operating system you'll be creating the disk on. ISO Recorder, once installed, will add "Copy Image to CD" to your right click context menu. If you use this tool, simply right click on the downloaded file (RC.ISO) and choose that option to start the software. You can burn the disk using default settings.

Put the disk you create into the broken machine and restart it...watch for the prompt to "Press any key to boot to cd" and press the spacebar when you see it. If it can find your operating system, it will display it next to a number (ie: 1) C:\Windows...). Press 1 and then Enter. When asked for the Admin Password, leave it blank and press Enter.

You should then get the Recovery Console prompt (C:\WINDOWS>). Type chkdsk /r and press Enter. (note the space before /r)

This should begin a very thorough check of the file system. Be patient...it will take quite some time to complete. It may appear to hang or even to back up a few times...this is normal.

When the check completes and you are back at the prompt, type exit and press Enter. Allow the machine to try to boot normally into Windows.

[wkd_chick]

thanks I will try this and let you know what happens

[wkd_chick]

I made the disc and tried to load it but it didn't give me the option to run the disc it still had the same error message, I tried to start the disc through the set up menu but still no luck

[wannabe1]

Do you have your boot priority set so that the cd-rom drive is first and the HDD is second? This setting is found in the BIOS setup.

If the boot priority is set correctly and the disk is burned as an ISO image, you should get the prompt.

[wkd_chick]

ok will try and change is as hdd is at the top

[wkd_chick]

now I am just getting a black screen with nothing on it

[wkd_chick]

and I can't get back into bios now either, hope I haven't made it worse

[wkd_chick]

ok don't know what happened but I restarted again and got the error message back