No Operating System installations found

[theville444]

Yesterday, my computer crashed. I tried to restart, but after the BIOS screen, it just goes black, and has a flashing '_' in the top left corner. So I put in the reinstallation CD to try to repair the computer. I do everything necessary to bring up the System Recovery tool, but in the box that lists the Operating System to repair, it doesn't list any. So I clicked on Load Drivers, as it instructs, to find the hard drive drivers, and I CAN SEE MY C DRIVE in the dialog box. I am able to browse it and everything (Windows, Program Files, My Documents, everything). So my computer recognizes the hard drive and everything, it just says that there is no OS installed. I can't run System Restore or anything. Does anybody have any ideas as to how to "find" the operating system? Could something have happened in the registry that I could go edit?

I have tried so many things through the command prompt, but nothing works.

 

[writhziden]

Have you run a disk check to recover bad sectors?

Use http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/666-advanced-boot-options.html to select Repair Your Computer and get to the http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html. Then select the command prompt. Do the following:

chkdsk /r c:
chkdsk /r d:
chkdsk /r e:
chkdsk /r f:​

.etc until you get the message that the volume could not be opened for direct access. For any drives that do not give the message:
"Windows has checked the file system and found no problems"
run chkdsk again as above. In other words, if it says:
"Windows has made corrections to the file system"
after running the disk check, run the disk check again.

I realize you may only have one disk show up in Windows explorer, but you may have more than one disk through recovery options. This is because the system creates a hidden boot partition (which will be C: in recovery), you may have a recovery partition for your PC that is hidden (which will be D: in recovery), and you will have your primary Windows partition (which may be E: in recovery). A custom PC will likely have at least C: and D: to scan.



Also, is this a laptop or desktop computer?

 

[theville444]

I just did that, and it doesn't help. Still no operating system showing up. It made corrections one time on the c and d drives, but then the second time it was fine.

I am on a desktop computer.

 

[theville444]

Although now when I try to boot up, instead of sitting there at the flashing '_' black screen, it at least brings up an error screen now after BIOS. It says Windows failed to start because of a recent hardware or software change, etc., etc.

File: \Boot\BCD

Status: 0xc0000098

Info: The Windows Boot Configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry

 

[GianniDPC]

Although now when I try to boot up, instead of sitting there at the flashing '_' black screen, it at least brings up an error screen now after BIOS. It says Windows failed to start because of a recent hardware or software change, etc., etc.

File: \Boot\BCD

Status: 0xc0000098

Info: The Windows Boot Configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry

Well ... are you able now to do a start-up repair ??

 

[writhziden]

As Gianni says, try startup repair first. Use http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/666-advanced-boot-options.html to select Repair Your Computer and use the http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html to select Startup Repair. You may have to run three times. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

You may need a repair disc to get to the recovery environment if you cannot access the Advanced Boot Options screen. Create a Windows 7 System Repair Disc — MAXIMUMpcguides – Windows 7 tips, tricks, help, and how-to guides. Since you cannot create the disc on your machine, try to find someone with a 64 bit version of Windows 7 to create one with that person's computer.

If none of the above work, run a hard disk diagnostic using the manufacturer's tools: HD Diagnostic

 

[theville444]

I can get into System Recovery with the Windows 7 installation disk that I have, but it still doesn't list an operating system, so when I try to run Startup Repair, it just throws an error saying no operating system installed. So that isn't really getting me anywhere.

Does it mean anything if I can't even press F8 to get into the Advanced Startup Options?

 

[writhziden]

You need to rebuild the boot configuration. How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows. If that does not work, I still recommend the hard disk diagnostics.

 

[theville444]

I guess I am going to have to work on the HD Diagnostics. I tried bootrec earlier with no results. I tried again and still no results.

bootrec.exe /ScanOs results in no operating systems found.

 

[writhziden]

I did also find this in the course of my research into your problem: Boot Critical File post #35

 

[theville444]

Hitting F12 during BIOS obviously brings up a screen where I can select where to boot from, but it also has a Diagnostics option. I ran that earlier and nothing turned up. Do you think that Diagnostics test is sufficient enough, or would it be most advised to go through the HD manufacturer?

 

[writhziden]

The HD manufacturer is more reliable since they built the drive and have better utilities for it.

 

[carwiz]

Malware can corrupt the MBR and/or UEFI partition too. If you do try to recover files from the disk, be sure to run a scan on it first. If you have a reliable backup of the your files already, you might just try a fresh Windows install.

 

[theville444]

Ugh, nothing is working. The main issue is that it never recognizes an operating system is installed, so I can never perform any tasks to fix it. I have finally decided to just reformat and reinstall. I was just trying to avoid the hours of reinstalling and setting up programs, but I guess I will have to deal with it. Thanks for all the help.

 

[writhziden]

I understand your pain. In the future, if you want to avoid having to go through the re-installation of software, you can make system image backups periodically that you may return to if your system stops working. I use http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html myself, but there is a nice tutorial for the Windows backups in http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html?ltr=B, as well.

 

[c094728]

I found this solution

I had this same problem on Windows 7 64 bit machine.

My 1st symptom was unable to boot with "No operating System found" error

Step 1:
boot to Windows 7 recovery disk (use another machine to create one if you don't have one. Must be same windows and same 32 or 64 bits machine)

open command window and run this command to fix the master boot record
bootrec /fixmbr

This would give me one successful boot to windows but the same problem may reoccur if you restart and you will need to repeat above step


Note: Norton scan showed I had Boot.cidox virus and could not remove. Contacted Norton support who told me to run norton power eraser but that found nothing and they had no suggestions other than to pay $100 for technical support.

Here are the steps I performed that actually fixed the problem.

Download and run TdsKiller.exe from kaspersky.com

It will detect the virus and prompt you that it needs to reboot to finish cleaning it up

When you reboot, you will need to first boot from the recovery disk again and run bootrec /fixmbr or you will get the unable to find operating system error again.

After you fix the boot record one last time, restart and tdskiller will finish cleaning up the virus. You will see a command window open up while it does this.

After this is complete you can re-run tdskiller and/or norton and it will find no more threats.

Thats it. Hope this helps someone as I spent the better part of a day finding a solution for this.


Note: this was a nasty virus would cause multiple instances of explorer.exe to show up in task manager and they would eat up a lot of CPU time. I would kill them all to make the system more responsive but then I woudn't have a task bar or start button. I would need to run explorer.exe from the file/run menu of task manager to bring it back.