New Virus?
 

My assistant just rebooted her pc, and now is getting "operating system not found"

any alternative to a format?

:helpme :helpme :helpme

Corrupt file/Corrupting harddrive.
I don't think it blatently states "Operating system not found"

:BangBang: Virus

Happened to me on an older machine; I couldn't even get to a DOS prompt to reformat the disc. Linux boot-from-CD distributions failed to load, Windows CD did nothing, diagnostics CD's did nothing..


Good luck.. :thumbsup

Sounds like a master boot record problem,
Full article - http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm

The simplest way to repair or re-create MBR is to run Microsoft's standard utility called FDISK with a parameter /MBR, like

A:\> FDISK.EXE /MBR

FDISK is a standard utility included in MS-DOS, Windows 95, 98, ME.

If you have Windows NT / 2000 / XP, you can boot from startup floppy disks or CD-ROM, choose repair option during setup, and run Recovery Console. When you are logged on, you can run FIXMBR command to fix MBR.

Also you can use third party MBR recovery software or if you've created MBR backup, restore it from there (Active@ Partition Recovery has such capabilities).

I guess there is some trouble with harddrive.

that could be anything from a bad harddrive to a bad motherboard/bios/ide controller

put the hard drive in another compter first and then go from there.

damn that sucks.

she got owned

If the fix mbr doesn't work let us know and maybe we can help you...

Your master boot record got corrupted. Its fixable but you can fuck up the ability to do it right if you start trying all sorts of things.

Did the bios detect the HD?

the bios is not detecting the hd at all. I'm having her replace the drive, and hopefully she can slave the old one and recover her material

fingers crossed
(thanks everybody)