pslewis

And it's not working right (thats why I was given it)

Anyway, you clever lot should be able to get it moving.

It is an NEC Laptop, when turned on it goes into 'Restore' - it trundles through to about 25% through and then reboots and starts again.

I hit F2 and change the boot info. nothing helped, then I reverted the changes back to default ....... now, it simply says 'Operating System not found' and sits there doing nowt.

Any ideas?

There is no recovery disc, it recovers from the hard drive partition apparently?

Anything I can do?

Title should say:- ACQUIRED!!!!

B-B

You need to hold down something while its starting up - I think its F10. I am sure you will get an IT tech that will talk you through it though.

pslewis

I've been holding everything down

mart360

Hold F8 on boot and enter startup menu


try to boot in safe mode

if it works its a driver issue prolly

if not repeat and try to start in safe mode with step by step conformation

if that dosent work


at the cmd prompt

del *.*

erase everything the protected section of the drive should (should ) be ok

then use a floppy (if it has one, or a windows recovery disk (win 98 generates them))

you may be lucky and at the cmd prompt just type setup, and it may re install windows..



Although it sounds like the hard drive is fubarred








the reason its fubarred, is because its got a duff pixel on the screen



mart

pslewis

F8 does nowt

"operating System not Found" message keeps coming up

It did try and restore when I got it - not now though!!

It went to about 25% and then re-booted and started the restore again, 25% later it would re-boot and off we would go again ...

There are NO faulty pixels on the screen

Sonic'

sounds like the OS is now missing, due to the restore failing

Do you have an XP CD you can re-install from ?

B-B

I have a recovery disk for my laptop somewhere - different make but you are welcome to try if all else fails?

pslewis

No, the old owner of it said that the restore was on a partition of the HD and it failed at 25% everytime he tried to restore - hence he was pig sick of it and I caould have it, good luck if I can get it working again!

I tried the desktop Restore CD - nothing.

bob269

Having the restore xp on the hd is a disaster and a cheap way of selling the Os, anyways, if you don't have xp then buy it, surely if the laptop was free then you'll be getting a bargain either way.

Sonic'

If the Laptop is licensed for XP, then if Pete has another XP cd he could use that and not a restore CD

I would be tempted to do this, it may just be the hard drive that is corrupt, you could get another drive for it and install an OS

Supercue

iTrader: (1)

Sounds like the O.S. is corrupt or missing a vital driver which is why it only gets to 25% and fails.

A clean install is the best way forward. Make sure you do a full format on the disk before installation

pslewis

OK, thanks all ..... I have an XP number on the machine - but no XP disc (my restore disc for the Desktop has it, but that didn't load??)

What do I do to re-format the HD and start again?

Sonic'

Pete you will need an XP CD, your restore CD wont work as it will be only for your desktop

XP installation will reformat the Hard Drive for you during the installation (providing you have a CD)

You will need a CD that corresponds to the version that the XP number on the machine states

IE XP Home, Professional etc

Your sticker that has the number on means it is licensed, you just need a kind obliging person to provide you with a CD to install from

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Or download one

pslewis

Thanks - I have no CD with XP on .....

It's XP Home Edition ...

Do I need a 'Boot' disc to start?

Sonic'

No, an XP CD will be bootable, does the key say whether it includes Service Pack 2 or not ?

pslewis

I have SP2 for my desktop - I will load that once I have XP Loaded

When I said Boot-Disc ... I meant a disc to boot the machine in DOS?

I hold F8 down when I turn on and nothing - the NEC Screen says hold F2 ... to enter set-up ..... this it does, but I cannot see what to do there?? It's all enable this, disable that ....

How do I re-Format from the set-up screen?

I have Windows 98 on a disc - maybe I could load that? At least it may work then???

Sonic'

You could try Windows 98 Pete

Basically you cannot reformat the drive from the Setup screen of the laptop, you will need an OS disc to do that

You dont need DOS

PM on its way to you

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

DOS

There is no DOS.. there a broken down command line

pslewis

MS-DOS is all I know of ........

Sonic - thanks for the pm ... much appreciated.

Now, assuming I download XP onto my desktop - could I burn it onto a disc and transfer that to the laptop? Or will it autorun on my desktop and do damage there?

I'm a bit concerned about what I'm doing as I'm a bit out of date with this stuff. Are you saying that my Laptop is a paving slab without an OS loaded, I can't even re-format from DOS (as there is no DOS?)

Time has left me behind ......

Sonic'

Yes Pete that is correct, laptop is a paving slab without any OS installed on it

Basically the image you download is an ISO image that you burn to a CD using something like Nero but make sure you burn as an Image, and dont just add the file to a list and burn that (if that makes sense)

Once you have the image burnt to CD, that CD will be bootable, and you can then put this in your laptop and bootup from that and it should start the installation process

pslewis

Cheers Sonic ...

I've downloaded XP - I've burn the image to disc - I've put it in the Laptop - I've made sure that it boots from cd-rom first.

The drive spins up but the black screen just sits there and then says there is no operating system ..... yet the burned CD contains it (if it is autobootable, will I be in trouble putting it back in the Desktop? It wanting to load XP on that!?)

I've told it to boot from the HD again and it goes into the NEC Recovery Program and stops each time at 25% - then re-starts the Recovery again

It stops at file msgr3en.dll ........ if that helps?

It's the XP CD which is confusing me, it should boot up from that, but doesn't?

pslewis

This time it has gone to 28% stopping at file lgwpaz.wwp ..... whatever that is - then starts all over again trying to recover GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Sonic'

Yes the CD image should be bootable, as it is an offical Microsoft XP disc image

You could try booting from your Windows 98 CD, as that should be bootable, sometimes some PC's ask you to press a key to boot from the CD whilst booting (think this is an XP/Windows 2000/2003 feature though)

Watch the screen closely when it looks like it is booting from the CD and see if it gives you the option of pressing a key to boot from CD

pslewis

Hiya - its booted from Windows 98!!

As I have nothing of mine on the PC I have told it to load Windows 98 - and it seems to be doing it!!

For some reason the disc I have burned doesn't appear to be bootable? There is nothing on the screen when I power up ... I have looked carefully.

The order of boot is CD-ROM first in the BIOS

Anyway, looks like I will have a laptop with Windows 98 on

I assume I could just instal XP at a later date without trouble? If I can burn a bootable disc?

GC8

Thi smay duplicate other replies, as I havent read the whole thread, but: it sounds as though the extended hidden sector recovery partition has been corrupted. It will be similar to that of a Packard Bell (as PB is an NEC brand). In this case you have two options: i) contact NEC and buy a new set of recovery discs, or ii) install WinXP from another source. There wont be anything there that you cant find drivers for with a minimum of fuss: in fact, everything will probably be on NECs support site, for any device that XP struggles with.

Simon

pslewis

Windows 98 has now 'hung up'

Seemed to be going well .... then some bad file lines came up and now I have a black screen with the HD chirping like a frog now and again

BOLLOX!!!!

GC8

Now you will need a Windows98 boot disk, in order to establish whats wrong. Win98 was the last version to provide a useful boot disk. FDisk first, remove the partition (and the non-DOS partition), remake the partition and see if it verifies. Then call back.....

pslewis

Simon

Thanks for your reply - there are no recovery discs ... the recovery seems to be on the HD

I have just downloaded XP Home Edition (I have the product key on the Laptop) - it won't boot from that.

Put in my old Windows 98 disc and it seemed to be loading 98 perfectly - it then hung-up and has now come up with a message saying that Windows cannot read from drive C.

Drive C was maybe in a different file format than 98 could read to?

Driving me NUTS!!

I now know why it was free!! OH, well .............

GC8

EXTHS is on the fixed disk! As you have had a similar failure recovering the machine using Win98, you have to start trying to establish why. The first thing to check is the fixed disk and you need a Win98 'boot disk' for this. If you have a machine runnuing Win98 then you can create one: failing that go to Bootdisk.Com and download one (its a writable image). With this disk you can (relatively) easily diagnose the problem. After the FDisk youl need to doa thorough surface scan. If the FDisk or that throw up an error then youll probably need a new fixed disk...