Just been round to look at a friends computer (HP Pavillion) which suddenly developed a fault. Displays normal HP screen when switched on but then fails to load Windows and eventually gives the error message 'operating system not found'. Booted it up with the HP supplied restore disc in the CD and got a DOS prompt. Ran recover.exe which goes through a few screens, then comes up with 'no hard disc found'.

Checked the data and power leads to the hard disc and they look OK. My guess it is a fairly terminal hard disck hardware fault unless anyone has any ideas?

Thanks,

Graham

 

if theres no HD in the bios then yeah its sounds terminal. i've found theres a number of workarounds with faulty HDs & loss of OS but if its not in the bios then your more than likely stuffed.
if youve got another HD then boot up with that & have the errored one as a 2nd HD. If it works there at least you can get data off.

 

Does the Hard Disc power up? If it does listen out for clicking and clunking noise, this will indicate a duff disc. As Invisibleman has pointed out, if it cannot be seen in the BIOS then you have bob hope of getting any further. Hard Discs are reletively cheap to buy now a days.