ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM

Question

When I try to boot my system up I get a black screen with this message   ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM   I have performed a 2000 recovery.  When I get to the prompt and chkdsk all volume is good.    However When I try to boot my system from the hard drive I continue to get this message.   ERROR LAODING OPERATING SYSTEM   Is there a way to re-install the operating system without losing all my data on the hard drive?   Thank You.

mombodog · Answer

Was this W2K working on this system before, did you change any hardware?

jayemC · Answer

Hi. I'm not the original poster, but it seems a waste to start a new one for the same error, so I'm hijacking. Hopefully I won't be breaking a forum rule and any help I get will be of use to him/her.

Anyway, my big plan was to load a 200 gig Maxtor DiamondPlus HD into a second hand Dell and run the whole thing using Windows 2000. Now, my computer literacy level is two short notches above the "don't pour water in the floppy disk drive" stage, but this seemed like a fairly simple task and I had what I thought were comprehensive instructions. I opened the package, set the jumpers so this would be the master drive (there is space for only one in the case), attached power and ribbon cables, ran the Win2K boot disks, put in the Win2K setup CD, selected no partitions because I wanted to keep everything simple (it only recognized about 130 gigs on the HD, but the Maxtor booklet mentioned that, so I figured it was something I could deal with later once I was sure at least the basics were working), selected NTFS for the file system, and waited while it formatted, examined my disks and copied files. My result was, at first, "disk read error". Now it has become "Error loading operating system".

Based on a little research, I suspect that what I did wrong was attempting to have no partitions. Some things I've read on line (which are not as informative as this place promises to be) suggest that the BIOS may not be able to deal with HDs of the capacity I am attempting to install, so I think I could just fix it by partitioning it all into, say, 30 gig sections (how many total partitions can one have, btw?). The thing is, I am too apprehensive to try because I have already botched things up nicely being an amateur and don't want to risk doing anything else that could damage the HD; as it is, I doubt it is unrecoverable, but it cost more than I wish to spend twice and want to stop messing around based on my own low level of knowledge.

Would you or someone else give me a clue as to whether or not I am on the right track? I would be very very grateful. Thank you.

Message Edited by jayemC on 11-03-2005 09:15 AM

gq14 · Answer

Yes the operating system was working fine.  No new hardware.  Never had a problem before.  Trying to reload the operating system without losing all my work. Thank YOu. Q

gq14 · Answer

No.  I had a power outage and then when I tried to start it back up only the blue screen would come up.  After attempting the recovery I still only get ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM.  Thank You. Q

mombodog · Answer

jayemc, your bios has to be able to recognize the 200gig disc, check the dell website to see if your model of Dell supports drives larger than 137gb, or a bios upgrade to do so. If it does not you cannot use this drive unless you use a card like the one below.

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail.asp?product_id=87

JersWork · Answer

Well,  They could use a Dynamic Overlay Software package (that usually ships with most large drives) as well,  although I would not generally recommend that option.

jayemC · Answer

Mombodog: It's a secondhand GX-150 Opti-plex, which this page:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2000/2000_10_30_rr_000?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb

says only runs HDs up to 40 gigs. So it's time for a that card. After reading this:

http://kb.iu.edu/data/akeh.html

I suppose I will upgrade the BIOS too. Thanks for the help! I'll post and let you know how it goes once the stuff arrives.

jayemC · Answer

OK, I tried to run the most recent version of the BIOS (A11, my system has A02) from a diskette and it didn't do anything. Since the 200 gig drive was never completely installed, I can see why. So I swapped it out, re-installed Win2K on the original 20 Gig drive, reformatted, etc. so I could Flash the BIOS from there and then replace the HD with the 200 gig. Now the error message I get is 'disk read error, press Ctrl+alt+Del to restart.' I've been here before, it was the original error message when I tried to do this the first time, so I guess this is progress of a sort in that it's becoming less broken... Again, any further advice would be greatly appreciated. I think it should be smooth when I get it to recognize a hard drive, it looks like I just have to flash the BIOS once that step is taken.   edit: this is starting to sound more like a HD than an OS question, so I moved to a thread in the OptiPlex forum and put my current status in there, but anything else you can share would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks for all your help folks!     Message Edited by jayemC on 11-04-2005 12:37 PM

JersWork · Answer

How old is your Windows 2000 Install?  From what I remember,  before one of the service packs (SP3?) Windows 2000 had issues with larger disks/partitions.  If you install was that old,  you needed to download a new set of install disk images from Microsoft and use those to perform the install if you had a large disk...

jayemC · Answer

'How old is your Windows 2000 Install?  From what I remember,  before one of the service packs (SP3?) Windows 2000 had issues with larger disks/partitions.  If you install was that old,  you needed to download a new set of install disk images from Microsoft and use those to perform the install if you had a large disk... '   It's old, I know that much. So, Windows Service Packs.   http://www.microsoft.com/Windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/sp4/download.asp   SP4 seems to contain all the previous ones, so I will go with that. The problem is, how do I install it when I can't even get the prior version of Windows 2000 to work? I couldn't even get the BIOS update to do anything - I just put the disk in the A drive and when the machine rebooted after the umpteenth attempt at formatting the drive correctly, it just sat there. Rebooting without the BIOS disk just gets me the 'Error loading OS' message.

JersWork · Answer

If you have a workig computer,  you could try slip-streaming a copy of SP4 into your install media to create an install image that already has SP4 included in it.  I had done it once before back when one of the earlier service packs for Win2K was released,  but I haven't done it for a few years.  A web search should give you plenty of help on how to do that. though.

jayemC · Answer

JersWork, thank you, but I don't have a functioning computer. It's a paper weight right now. It just sits there. I formatted the HD, selected NTFS etc and it just reboots and says 'Error Loading OS'. Every time. No matter what HD I use - including a dinky 20 gig thing I bought specifically to use while I was trying to update the BIOS before I moved on to a larger HD. It won't do anything. I can enter the setup while that 'Setup=F2' thing appears at the top of the screen, but that's useless because I don't see any options to update the BIOS.   edit: I keep seeing mention of something called 'fdisk' when I Google about this error. Might that work? Message Edited by jayemC on 11-22-2005 03:16 PM

theflash1932 · Answer

??

muthusivam · Answer

error loading operating system

Windows General

ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM

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