"Operating System Not Found"??

I had Windows 7 running on my Samsung NP-R510 until the other evening when I left it running, and it switched off while I was away.

When I turned it back on I got the Samsung entry page with the Recoveryy and Boot options, when I got into Recovery I got the message "Boot from AHCI CD-ROM, Operating System not found"

I inserted my Win 7 Installation disc, it goes as far as Install, then says No Drivers found, insert disc with Drivers or additional hardware.

Not sure where to go then, I created a Win 7 Recovery Disc from my wife's laptop, inserted this, still says No Drivers Found.

I'm not bad in general finding solutions to problems on laptops but I'm completely stuck with this. I even tried to install Windows XP from an installation disc I had for that system, still won't work.

There are no partitions showing on hard drive so looks as though I've had a virus which has wiped everything from my hard drive!

Any help would be appreciated.

Okay.

This would tell me that it's trying to find the Operating System on a CD-ROM drive, so it's definitely not going to find anything. Your Operating System is installed on your hard drive, not a CD-ROM drive.

You'd have to change the boot sequence, and check for your active partition/drive. I'm sure something triggered one of those settings to change in your BIOS. Don't take the BIOS lightly though, if you don't know what you're doing, you can mess up your computer pretty badly through the BIOS.

In sum, you don't have a virus, and your data should still be on your hard drive, it's just refusing to load from your hard drive with your main OS installed on it.

Ace, thanks for your reply, I don't think I explained myself clearly.

I am aware operating system is held on the hard drive, I altered the boot menu so it would read the AHCI CD-ROM option, where I was loading the recovery disc, as there appears to be nothing on the hard drive.

I mentioned that I tried to install Windows XP, using the AHCI CD-ROM setting, as this is the only option that seems to work.

It gets so far, then says no hard disc drive found.

To my mind, whether the operating system exists on the hard drive or not, I am not being allowed to access it, which very strongly appears to indicate malware or a virus, but as I can't load any programmes to check, I can't be certain.

Also when trying to install XP, the section which should show Partitions, this is blank, as I don't appear to have a HDD

At this stage I'd be glad of a way to just wipe the hard drive and start again but as it appears I haven't got one, thats not an option!!

Many thanks for your input, hope you can help me further??

Cheers

You didn't have any partitions on your drive previously? You should have a System Reserved, along with at least one other partition, usually 2 on some factory machines for an image, and the main OS.

Either everything got wiped out and you now have a completely reformatted hard drive with 100% unallocated space on it, or something went corrupted from the way you describe it.

It shouldn't find partitions/volumes if there are none, unless there's an option in your installer that allows you to format the creation of a new volume to make into a partition for the files such as Linux, which needs to be formatted for ext4 generally.

This is an internal drive i'm assuming...

Yes it's an internal drive, yes it must have partitions to contain the operating system, and yes I did have partitions previously, but what I am trying to say is EVERYTHING "APPEARS" to have disappeared!

There are no visible partitions as I said, so nothing to contain an OP system.

This is why I earlier said about a possible virus/Trojan thats making it look like it's disappeared, for as you said before if what I've said is correct I should now have a reformatted hard disc drive - but according to my laptop, I haven't even got a physical HDD!

Appreciate your help thanks

If you don't get a physical one then you might still be in luck, there's just a problem with reading it. I'm assuming your solution is a setting in the BIOS, but i'd have to verify that more closely first. If it doesn't read anything then you have no surefire way of telling if it's corrupted or reformatted somehow.

And I did read your post, I understand what you meant

Your laptop uses SATA drives or IDE? I personally hate working with laptops... but I know if this was my desktop i'd be checking for loose cables as well.

HDs do go bad: head-crash, etc and of course laptops take more abuse than desktops. Does the BIOS see the HD? Like if you select the HD will it tell you the size, sectors, etc? Because if your HD is dead then it doesn't matter what you try to install on it.

Hello there,

I also think it's a good idea to rebuild your MBR.

Ok folks this is getting far too complicated for me, I'm an enthusiastic amateur so when we start talking about "Rebuild your MBR" thats when it goes beyond my capabilities!

When I get into boot options and select boot from HDD, nothing happens, when I've tried to load an installation prog like XP or 7 and load from AHCI Drive CR-ROM then it follows it so far, in 7 it says no drivers found, in XP says no HDD found!!

The HDD may well still hold all my files, but I can't even locate it to see, which leads me to believe it's a virus.

TrainableMan you say "Does the BIOS see the HD?" How do I go about finding this out?

On the Samsung welcolme screen I've got F2 and F12, Boot or Recovery Options, these are the only 2 things I can open!

I'd quite happily lose any files, progs I had on on the HDD if I could just get the damned thing back!!! Or is it possible as was said above this is now fried??

Any assistance further provided please explain as you would to a kid please, so if it's complex I can follow!!

Thanks to all for your help so far!!

Cheers

does your hard drive get recognized within the BIOS?

Usually it's the ESC key on boot, and you can load into your BIOS, but i'm assuming you've never been there before though so i'm considering whether or not you should even be going in there. If you do, make sure that you don't change anything.