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#1
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no operating system upon boot
I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive
partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? |
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#2
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no operating system upon boot
Zattack wrote:
I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? You can't merge a partition with just disk management.My guess is that you formatted the entire drive. Loading the recovery disks now won't hurt anything. You've already lost your data. Hope you had a backup. gls858 |
#3
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no operating system upon boot
"gls858" wrote in message ... Zattack wrote: I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? You can't merge a partition with just disk management.My guess is that you formatted the entire drive. Loading the recovery disks now won't hurt anything. You've already lost your data. Hope you had a backup. gls858 I know that I did not format the c drive as I was able to still operate and do things after the format of the D drive. I am thinking the boot up is confused on which drive to boot to to get the operating system. Granted I am grasping at hope at this point, but I would have assumed that during the format it would have cuased some sort of error in trying to delete everything while I was still in drive management. Is there any way to try and browse the c drive or get to that point? |
#4
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no operating system upon boot
Zattack wrote:
"gls858" wrote in message ... Zattack wrote: I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? You can't merge a partition with just disk management.My guess is that you formatted the entire drive. Loading the recovery disks now won't hurt anything. You've already lost your data. Hope you had a backup. gls858 I know that I did not format the c drive as I was able to still operate and do things after the format of the D drive. I am thinking the boot up is confused on which drive to boot to to get the operating system. Granted I am grasping at hope at this point, but I would have assumed that during the format it would have cuased some sort of error in trying to delete everything while I was still in drive management. Is there any way to try and browse the c drive or get to that point? Hope your right and I'm wrong Zattack. I just know you can't merge partitions using disk management. It takes third party software like Partition Magic. What do you mean you were able to "operate and do things after the format". It would seem logical that you would get an error message if you tried to format the partition with your operating system on it. But then it again it is an MS product :-) Maybe someone else will have a suggestion. gls858 |
#5
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no operating system upon boot
"gls858" wrote in message ... Zattack wrote: "gls858" wrote in message ... Zattack wrote: I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? You can't merge a partition with just disk management.My guess is that you formatted the entire drive. Loading the recovery disks now won't hurt anything. You've already lost your data. Hope you had a backup. gls858 I know that I did not format the c drive as I was able to still operate and do things after the format of the D drive. I am thinking the boot up is confused on which drive to boot to to get the operating system. Granted I am grasping at hope at this point, but I would have assumed that during the format it would have cuased some sort of error in trying to delete everything while I was still in drive management. Is there any way to try and browse the c drive or get to that point? Hope your right and I'm wrong Zattack. I just know you can't merge partitions using disk management. It takes third party software like Partition Magic. What do you mean you were able to "operate and do things after the format". It would seem logical that you would get an error message if you tried to format the partition with your operating system on it. But then it again it is an MS product :-) Maybe someone else will have a suggestion. gls858 I appreciate the advice. What I meant was that the format was done while using the XP disk management utility. It lets you view the different drives and you can partition, name and format them from a user friendly screen. After formatting drive d, I closed the utility and then operated a couple other programs, a word file and internet explorer before shutting down the system. That is why I don't believe the c drive was harmed as that is where most of my data resided. I think I just screwed up by making drive d also a primary partition so now upon botting the system is confused? Not sure, perhaps anyone else has experienced this or has advice? |
#6
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no operating system upon boot
Hi, Zattack.
Several things here "do not compute". :( First, as gls858 said, you can't use Disk Management to merge partitions. DM can delete a partition and create a new one, or multiple smaller ones, in that space. But DM can't shrink a partition or enlarge one or merge two. And it can't do much of anything with the System Partition (almost always Drive C or the Boot Volume (often also Drive C. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, OK. You would have been formatting D:, the logical drive within the extended partition. An extended partition doesn't get a drive letter and can't be formatted, but you can create one or more logical drives within the extended partition, assign them letters and format them. So I assume that after this you had a primary partition (Drive C and an extended partition with one freshly-formatted logical drive (Drive D. Drive C: was both the System Partition and the Boot Volume. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, WHOA! HOW did you attempt to merge Drive D: back with Drive C:? Did you use any third-party tools, such as Partition Magic? Or only WinXP and its built-in utilities, such as Disk Management? Or perhaps some utility supplied by Sony? Disk Management won't touch Drive C:, normally. upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. That could be awful - or not. Maybe it can't find the operating system because it's looking in the wrong place - on Drive A: (the floppy), for example, or Drive D:, where the system hasn't been installed. If you have the retail WinXP CD-ROM, you might be able to boot it, then choose R to enter the Recovery Console. From there, run FixBoot (and maybe FixMBR and BootCFG) to repair your boot sector and restore your ability to boot into WinXP. I don't know if the Sony CD has the FixBoot utility. MAYBE all you need to do is point it back to Drive C:, but there's no way we can tell that from here. The message could well mean that the operating system has been erased from Drive C:. :( I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to I've never had a Sony, but "recovery disks" often take the drastic step of returning your computer to the state it was in when it left the factory. In other words, everything you've added will be gone and you will be starting over. If Drive C: has, in fact, been reformatted, this might be your only good option. I don't know whether you will have a chance to change the size of Drive C:. For future reference (probably too late to do any good now), there is a program on the full retail WinXP CD-ROM called DiskPart, a part of the Recovery Console. (This is not the same as DiskPart.exe, which can be run from WinXP.) Whether this is on the Sony recovery disk, I don't know. DiskPart has an /extend parameter that will "grow" a partition, if several requirements are met. Search the Help and Support file for details, but it probably would not have helped you in this case, anyhow. It's not clear to me just how you reformatted D:, or whether C: is untouched. If C: is intact, and if you can take out that HD and move it into another computer, you should be able to recover all your data into the other computer, then move it back into this one later. Only you know how much the "lost" data is worth to you. If it is valuable enough to you, and if Drive C: has not actually been reformatted, you might buy a full retail copy of WinXP (either Home or Pro). Then boot from that retail WinXP CD-ROM and do an in-place upgrade, as described he How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;q315341 This will reinstall WinXP itself but, so long as your Registry is intact on Drive C:, it will preserve your existing applications and data. It will not give you an opportunity to increase the size of your existing partition, though, so you will not be better off than you were "before the issues". To make a larger Drive C:, you really have only two options: backup/repartition/reformat/restore, or use a third-party solution. Many of us have had the problem of too-full Drive C:, so you will find many threads here with tips on how to keep as much as possible in other volumes. If you must repartition and reformat, try to make Drive C: at least 5 GB; 10 is better, and many people (including Microsoft) recommend having only a single partition using all the space on the hard disk. (I like to separate the few System Files into a minimal primary partition Drive C:, the operating system itself into logical Drive D:, and applications and data into one or more other logical drives, but that is a topic for another thread.) RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP "Zattack" wrote in message ... I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? |
#7
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no operating system upon boot
You cannot format the system drive (C in Windows. It will stop you.
Attempting to merge drives C: and D: in Drive Manager, however, removes all partition information. The message you are getting says it all. It is likely that the D: drive was a small partition (probably 1GB or so) designed for backing up your Documents and Settings folder. If so, merging the two might not gain you much. However you recover from this, I suggest you buy an external hard drive to use to back up your system regularly. If you decide to shop for an external drive, keep in mind that your laptop should have a usb port to take advantage of an external device and that you can buy external drives with bundled backup software. Buy a drive that is at least double the size of the drive in your laptop. It will also come in handy for storing some of the things that prompted you to try to make more space. Use the restore disks that came with your computer. Your laptop requires motherboard drivers, device drivers, and utility programs that are specific for your computer and you need the restore program to get those back onto your system. Good luck. "Zattack" wrote in message ... I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? |
#8
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no operating system upon boot
"R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Zattack. Several things here "do not compute". :( First, as gls858 said, you can't use Disk Management to merge partitions. DM can delete a partition and create a new one, or multiple smaller ones, in that space. But DM can't shrink a partition or enlarge one or merge two. And it can't do much of anything with the System Partition (almost always Drive C or the Boot Volume (often also Drive C. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, OK. You would have been formatting D:, the logical drive within the extended partition. An extended partition doesn't get a drive letter and can't be formatted, but you can create one or more logical drives within the extended partition, assign them letters and format them. So I assume that after this you had a primary partition (Drive C and an extended partition with one freshly-formatted logical drive (Drive D. Drive C: was both the System Partition and the Boot Volume. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, WHOA! HOW did you attempt to merge Drive D: back with Drive C:? Did you use any third-party tools, such as Partition Magic? Or only WinXP and its built-in utilities, such as Disk Management? Or perhaps some utility supplied by Sony? Disk Management won't touch Drive C:, normally. upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. That could be awful - or not. Maybe it can't find the operating system because it's looking in the wrong place - on Drive A: (the floppy), for example, or Drive D:, where the system hasn't been installed. If you have the retail WinXP CD-ROM, you might be able to boot it, then choose R to enter the Recovery Console. From there, run FixBoot (and maybe FixMBR and BootCFG) to repair your boot sector and restore your ability to boot into WinXP. I don't know if the Sony CD has the FixBoot utility. MAYBE all you need to do is point it back to Drive C:, but there's no way we can tell that from here. The message could well mean that the operating system has been erased from Drive C:. :( I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to I've never had a Sony, but "recovery disks" often take the drastic step of returning your computer to the state it was in when it left the factory. In other words, everything you've added will be gone and you will be starting over. If Drive C: has, in fact, been reformatted, this might be your only good option. I don't know whether you will have a chance to change the size of Drive C:. For future reference (probably too late to do any good now), there is a program on the full retail WinXP CD-ROM called DiskPart, a part of the Recovery Console. (This is not the same as DiskPart.exe, which can be run from WinXP.) Whether this is on the Sony recovery disk, I don't know. DiskPart has an /extend parameter that will "grow" a partition, if several requirements are met. Search the Help and Support file for details, but it probably would not have helped you in this case, anyhow. It's not clear to me just how you reformatted D:, or whether C: is untouched. If C: is intact, and if you can take out that HD and move it into another computer, you should be able to recover all your data into the other computer, then move it back into this one later. Only you know how much the "lost" data is worth to you. If it is valuable enough to you, and if Drive C: has not actually been reformatted, you might buy a full retail copy of WinXP (either Home or Pro). Then boot from that retail WinXP CD-ROM and do an in-place upgrade, as described he How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;q315341 This will reinstall WinXP itself but, so long as your Registry is intact on Drive C:, it will preserve your existing applications and data. It will not give you an opportunity to increase the size of your existing partition, though, so you will not be better off than you were "before the issues". To make a larger Drive C:, you really have only two options: backup/repartition/reformat/restore, or use a third-party solution. Many of us have had the problem of too-full Drive C:, so you will find many threads here with tips on how to keep as much as possible in other volumes. If you must repartition and reformat, try to make Drive C: at least 5 GB; 10 is better, and many people (including Microsoft) recommend having only a single partition using all the space on the hard disk. (I like to separate the few System Files into a minimal primary partition Drive C:, the operating system itself into logical Drive D:, and applications and data into one or more other logical drives, but that is a topic for another thread.) RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP "Zattack" wrote in message ... I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not explained the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup with a partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive c and less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything, programs, files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was maxed out on space. In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the drive D could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management utility. My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with c, which I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as Partition Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and formatted it while still in disk management. If you are familiar with the disk management utility it has a little window that displays the drives with color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work with and such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c, listed itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as a separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary drive. After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump on the internet. I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message. I am fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting it down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated windows shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working in it... So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot the system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate outside windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it built it into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery disk has only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and begin new install or format all drives and begin install... Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of WinXp the only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the system to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I want to at least try to recovery the system as it was... |
#9
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no operating system upon boot
What has happened is that Disk Management made D: the active partition.
"Zattack" wrote in message ... "R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Zattack. Several things here "do not compute". :( First, as gls858 said, you can't use Disk Management to merge partitions. DM can delete a partition and create a new one, or multiple smaller ones, in that space. But DM can't shrink a partition or enlarge one or merge two. And it can't do much of anything with the System Partition (almost always Drive C or the Boot Volume (often also Drive C. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, OK. You would have been formatting D:, the logical drive within the extended partition. An extended partition doesn't get a drive letter and can't be formatted, but you can create one or more logical drives within the extended partition, assign them letters and format them. So I assume that after this you had a primary partition (Drive C and an extended partition with one freshly-formatted logical drive (Drive D. Drive C: was both the System Partition and the Boot Volume. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, WHOA! HOW did you attempt to merge Drive D: back with Drive C:? Did you use any third-party tools, such as Partition Magic? Or only WinXP and its built-in utilities, such as Disk Management? Or perhaps some utility supplied by Sony? Disk Management won't touch Drive C:, normally. upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. That could be awful - or not. Maybe it can't find the operating system because it's looking in the wrong place - on Drive A: (the floppy), for example, or Drive D:, where the system hasn't been installed. If you have the retail WinXP CD-ROM, you might be able to boot it, then choose R to enter the Recovery Console. From there, run FixBoot (and maybe FixMBR and BootCFG) to repair your boot sector and restore your ability to boot into WinXP. I don't know if the Sony CD has the FixBoot utility. MAYBE all you need to do is point it back to Drive C:, but there's no way we can tell that from here. The message could well mean that the operating system has been erased from Drive C:. :( I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to I've never had a Sony, but "recovery disks" often take the drastic step of returning your computer to the state it was in when it left the factory. In other words, everything you've added will be gone and you will be starting over. If Drive C: has, in fact, been reformatted, this might be your only good option. I don't know whether you will have a chance to change the size of Drive C:. For future reference (probably too late to do any good now), there is a program on the full retail WinXP CD-ROM called DiskPart, a part of the Recovery Console. (This is not the same as DiskPart.exe, which can be run from WinXP.) Whether this is on the Sony recovery disk, I don't know. DiskPart has an /extend parameter that will "grow" a partition, if several requirements are met. Search the Help and Support file for details, but it probably would not have helped you in this case, anyhow. It's not clear to me just how you reformatted D:, or whether C: is untouched. If C: is intact, and if you can take out that HD and move it into another computer, you should be able to recover all your data into the other computer, then move it back into this one later. Only you know how much the "lost" data is worth to you. If it is valuable enough to you, and if Drive C: has not actually been reformatted, you might buy a full retail copy of WinXP (either Home or Pro). Then boot from that retail WinXP CD-ROM and do an in-place upgrade, as described he How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;q315341 This will reinstall WinXP itself but, so long as your Registry is intact on Drive C:, it will preserve your existing applications and data. It will not give you an opportunity to increase the size of your existing partition, though, so you will not be better off than you were "before the issues". To make a larger Drive C:, you really have only two options: backup/repartition/reformat/restore, or use a third-party solution. Many of us have had the problem of too-full Drive C:, so you will find many threads here with tips on how to keep as much as possible in other volumes. If you must repartition and reformat, try to make Drive C: at least 5 GB; 10 is better, and many people (including Microsoft) recommend having only a single partition using all the space on the hard disk. (I like to separate the few System Files into a minimal primary partition Drive C:, the operating system itself into logical Drive D:, and applications and data into one or more other logical drives, but that is a topic for another thread.) RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP "Zattack" wrote in message ... I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not explained the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup with a partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive c and less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything, programs, files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was maxed out on space. In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the drive D could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management utility. My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with c, which I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as Partition Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and formatted it while still in disk management. If you are familiar with the disk management utility it has a little window that displays the drives with color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work with and such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c, listed itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as a separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary drive. After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump on the internet. I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message. I am fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting it down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated windows shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working in it... So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot the system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate outside windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it built it into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery disk has only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and begin new install or format all drives and begin install... Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of WinXp the only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the system to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I want to at least try to recovery the system as it was... |
#10
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no operating system upon boot
Hi, Zattack.
I've snipped most of the thread so far so that we can concentrate on your latest post. "Zattack" wrote in message ... Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not explained the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup with a partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive c and less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything, programs, files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was maxed out on space. Not an unusual situation at all. Many of us have wished for more space in Drive C:. In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the drive D could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management utility. My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with c, which I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as Partition Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and formatted it while still in disk management. Unnecessary, because WinXP doesn't care whether any volume is primary or logical EXCEPT that the System Partition (almost always Drive C must be a primary partition. The Boot Volume (where the \Windows folder, with its gigabytes of files, resides) may be Drive C: or any other volume on any HD in your computer. In your case, it apparently was Drive C:. As I said, this step was unnecessary and probably did no good, but it did no harm, either. If you are familiar with the disk management utility it has a little window that displays the drives with color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work with and such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c, listed itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as a separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary drive. OK. Situation normal. After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump on the internet. OK. I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message. NOT OK! Now it's time for a lesson in the boot process, but I'm pressed time for today. Some essential points: The few System Files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) must be in the Root of the System Partition: the Active partition on the first HD, almost always Drive C:. The boot sector of the System Partition load C:\NTLDR, which uses C:\Boot.ini to find the Boot Volume and load WinXP from there and start it. The error message you saw says that the boot process cannot find an operating system in what it thinks is the System Partition. It's getting lost on its way to Drive C:. :( It's not a Windows problem, strictly speaking. It's a hardware/BIOS problem. The boot process can't find ANY operating system. Not WinXP, not Win9x, not even MS-DOS. Most likely, it's looking in the wrong place. Now you have to find out where it's looking and direct it back to your Drive C:. I am fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting it down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated windows shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working in it... Agreed. Whatever caused the problem, this wasn't it. So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot the system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate outside windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it built it into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery disk has only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and begin new install or format all drives and begin install... Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of WinXp the only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the system to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I want to at least try to recovery the system as it was... Hey, I just thought of something! When you used Disk Management to create and format the primary partition that became Drive D:, did you "Mark Partition as Active"? Each HD can have only ONE Active (bootable) partition at any one time. If you marked D: as Active, C: would have had to have lost that designation. The next time you booted, the system would have looked for NTLDR, etc., on Drive D:, the active partition. Not finding them there, it would have given you that "no operating system" message and died - just what you saw. I have to run now, but I'll bet that's the answer. Sorry to leave you at this point, but I have to run. I'll check back when I have time tomorrow. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP |
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no operating system upon boot
Whatever.
"R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Colin. You cannot format the system drive (C in Windows. It will stop you. Agreed! Attempting to merge drives C: and D: in Drive Manager, however, removes all partition information. The message you are getting says it all. Huh? What is Drive Manager? I know the WinNT4 utility Disk Manager. And I know the much-more-capable Win2K/XP utility Disk Management. But I'm not sure if I ever heard of Drive Manager? Was this just a slip of the tongue (or finger), or did you mean a different program? Maybe one that Sony supplies? In Disk Management, there's no way that I know of to even attempt to "merge" partitions. Or to directly convert a logical drive to a partition, primary or otherwise. Zattack would have had to: (1) delete logical Drive D:, leaving the extended partition empty; (2) delete the empty extended partition; then (3) create a new primary partition in the now-unallocated space. Then he could format Drive D: and use it. But this should not have left him unable to boot to WinXP still on C:. The message he is getting (operating system not found) should not appear in that case. I'll try to reply to Zattack's latest post, but I might not be able to do that until tomorrow. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP "Colin Barnhorst" wrote in message ... You cannot format the system drive (C in Windows. It will stop you. Attempting to merge drives C: and D: in Drive Manager, however, removes all partition information. The message you are getting says it all. It is likely that the D: drive was a small partition (probably 1GB or so) designed for backing up your Documents and Settings folder. If so, merging the two might not gain you much. However you recover from this, I suggest you buy an external hard drive to use to back up your system regularly. If you decide to shop for an external drive, keep in mind that your laptop should have a usb port to take advantage of an external device and that you can buy external drives with bundled backup software. Buy a drive that is at least double the size of the drive in your laptop. It will also come in handy for storing some of the things that prompted you to try to make more space. Use the restore disks that came with your computer. Your laptop requires motherboard drivers, device drivers, and utility programs that are specific for your computer and you need the restore program to get those back onto your system. Good luck. "Zattack" wrote in message ... I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not found. I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat and start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I was before the issues? |
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no operating system upon boot
Setting the new partition to active may have indeed been what I did, however
since I cannot boot up to see that I just don't know. What would I need to do to even investigate if the pointers are not going to the correct boot drive? Z "R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Zattack. I've snipped most of the thread so far so that we can concentrate on your latest post. "Zattack" wrote in message ... Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not explained the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup with a partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive c and less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything, programs, files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was maxed out on space. Not an unusual situation at all. Many of us have wished for more space in Drive C:. In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the drive D could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management utility. My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with c, which I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as Partition Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and formatted it while still in disk management. Unnecessary, because WinXP doesn't care whether any volume is primary or logical EXCEPT that the System Partition (almost always Drive C must be a primary partition. The Boot Volume (where the \Windows folder, with its gigabytes of files, resides) may be Drive C: or any other volume on any HD in your computer. In your case, it apparently was Drive C:. As I said, this step was unnecessary and probably did no good, but it did no harm, either. If you are familiar with the disk management utility it has a little window that displays the drives with color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work with and such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c, listed itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as a separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary drive. OK. Situation normal. After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump on the internet. OK. I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message. NOT OK! Now it's time for a lesson in the boot process, but I'm pressed time for today. Some essential points: The few System Files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) must be in the Root of the System Partition: the Active partition on the first HD, almost always Drive C:. The boot sector of the System Partition load C:\NTLDR, which uses C:\Boot.ini to find the Boot Volume and load WinXP from there and start it. The error message you saw says that the boot process cannot find an operating system in what it thinks is the System Partition. It's getting lost on its way to Drive C:. :( It's not a Windows problem, strictly speaking. It's a hardware/BIOS problem. The boot process can't find ANY operating system. Not WinXP, not Win9x, not even MS-DOS. Most likely, it's looking in the wrong place. Now you have to find out where it's looking and direct it back to your Drive C:. I am fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting it down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated windows shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working in it... Agreed. Whatever caused the problem, this wasn't it. So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot the system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate outside windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it built it into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery disk has only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and begin new install or format all drives and begin install... Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of WinXp the only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the system to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I want to at least try to recovery the system as it was... Hey, I just thought of something! When you used Disk Management to create and format the primary partition that became Drive D:, did you "Mark Partition as Active"? Each HD can have only ONE Active (bootable) partition at any one time. If you marked D: as Active, C: would have had to have lost that designation. The next time you booted, the system would have looked for NTLDR, etc., on Drive D:, the active partition. Not finding them there, it would have given you that "no operating system" message and died - just what you saw. I have to run now, but I'll bet that's the answer. Sorry to leave you at this point, but I have to run. I'll check back when I have time tomorrow. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP |
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no operating system upon boot
Hi, Zattack.
I've waited a couple of days hoping someone would jump in with the tip for setting a volume Active when you can't boot WinXP. It's easy to do from WinXP Disk Management - but if you can't boot, that doesn't help. :( I'm pretty sure it can be done from the Recovery Console, but I can't find it in the instructions in the WinXP Resource Kit. (You might try FixMBR and FixBoot, but I'm not sure they would do this.) I've often recommended that WinXP users "throw away the Win9x/ME boot disk, or at least hide it so that you'll never be tempted to use it again" - but that diskette may be the best solution to your problem. Boot into MS-DOS. Don't expect to read any NTFS partitions with it, but FDISK creates and deletes partitions without regard to their formatting. So, boot to MS-DOS and run FDISK to change the Active partition on your hard drive. I've not actually done this in a while, but it should work for you. Please post back and let us know what results you get with this. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP "Zattack" wrote in message ... Setting the new partition to active may have indeed been what I did, however since I cannot boot up to see that I just don't know. What would I need to do to even investigate if the pointers are not going to the correct boot drive? Z "R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Zattack. I've snipped most of the thread so far so that we can concentrate on your latest post. "Zattack" wrote in message ... Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not explained the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup with a partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive c and less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything, programs, files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was maxed out on space. Not an unusual situation at all. Many of us have wished for more space in Drive C:. In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the drive D could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management utility. My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with c, which I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as Partition Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and formatted it while still in disk management. Unnecessary, because WinXP doesn't care whether any volume is primary or logical EXCEPT that the System Partition (almost always Drive C must be a primary partition. The Boot Volume (where the \Windows folder, with its gigabytes of files, resides) may be Drive C: or any other volume on any HD in your computer. In your case, it apparently was Drive C:. As I said, this step was unnecessary and probably did no good, but it did no harm, either. If you are familiar with the disk management utility it has a little window that displays the drives with color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work with and such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c, listed itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as a separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary drive. OK. Situation normal. After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump on the internet. OK. I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message. NOT OK! Now it's time for a lesson in the boot process, but I'm pressed time for today. Some essential points: The few System Files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) must be in the Root of the System Partition: the Active partition on the first HD, almost always Drive C:. The boot sector of the System Partition load C:\NTLDR, which uses C:\Boot.ini to find the Boot Volume and load WinXP from there and start it. The error message you saw says that the boot process cannot find an operating system in what it thinks is the System Partition. It's getting lost on its way to Drive C:. :( It's not a Windows problem, strictly speaking. It's a hardware/BIOS problem. The boot process can't find ANY operating system. Not WinXP, not Win9x, not even MS-DOS. Most likely, it's looking in the wrong place. Now you have to find out where it's looking and direct it back to your Drive C:. I am fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting it down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated windows shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working in it... Agreed. Whatever caused the problem, this wasn't it. So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot the system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate outside windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it built it into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery disk has only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and begin new install or format all drives and begin install... Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of WinXp the only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the system to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I want to at least try to recovery the system as it was... Hey, I just thought of something! When you used Disk Management to create and format the primary partition that became Drive D:, did you "Mark Partition as Active"? Each HD can have only ONE Active (bootable) partition at any one time. If you marked D: as Active, C: would have had to have lost that designation. The next time you booted, the system would have looked for NTLDR, etc., on Drive D:, the active partition. Not finding them there, it would have given you that "no operating system" message and died - just what you saw. I have to run now, but I'll bet that's the answer. Sorry to leave you at this point, but I have to run. I'll check back when I have time tomorrow. RC |
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no operating system upon boot
I really do appreciate the help RC. Unfortunately time was of the essense
to get the laptop working again and in this case while it is a pain to fully format and reinstall everything, there truly was nothing that couldn't be replaced on that laptop. So I decided to use Sony's solution and totally reformat & install through their system restore disks. Really this solved a couple problems because I could get the system back to a single drive non partitioned out and I could gut alot of useless programs that had been accumulated yet were not easily identified. In my case I was somewhat lucky because I hadn't stored anything valuable on the laptop that could not be reinstalled. Thanks again, Z "R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Zattack. I've waited a couple of days hoping someone would jump in with the tip for setting a volume Active when you can't boot WinXP. It's easy to do from WinXP Disk Management - but if you can't boot, that doesn't help. :( I'm pretty sure it can be done from the Recovery Console, but I can't find it in the instructions in the WinXP Resource Kit. (You might try FixMBR and FixBoot, but I'm not sure they would do this.) I've often recommended that WinXP users "throw away the Win9x/ME boot disk, or at least hide it so that you'll never be tempted to use it again" - but that diskette may be the best solution to your problem. Boot into MS-DOS. Don't expect to read any NTFS partitions with it, but FDISK creates and deletes partitions without regard to their formatting. So, boot to MS-DOS and run FDISK to change the Active partition on your hard drive. I've not actually done this in a while, but it should work for you. Please post back and let us know what results you get with this. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP "Zattack" wrote in message ... Setting the new partition to active may have indeed been what I did, however since I cannot boot up to see that I just don't know. What would I need to do to even investigate if the pointers are not going to the correct boot drive? Z "R. C. White" wrote in message ... Hi, Zattack. I've snipped most of the thread so far so that we can concentrate on your latest post. "Zattack" wrote in message ... Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not explained the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup with a partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive c and less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything, programs, files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was maxed out on space. Not an unusual situation at all. Many of us have wished for more space in Drive C:. In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the drive D could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management utility. My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with c, which I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as Partition Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and formatted it while still in disk management. Unnecessary, because WinXP doesn't care whether any volume is primary or logical EXCEPT that the System Partition (almost always Drive C must be a primary partition. The Boot Volume (where the \Windows folder, with its gigabytes of files, resides) may be Drive C: or any other volume on any HD in your computer. In your case, it apparently was Drive C:. As I said, this step was unnecessary and probably did no good, but it did no harm, either. If you are familiar with the disk management utility it has a little window that displays the drives with color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work with and such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c, listed itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as a separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary drive. OK. Situation normal. After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump on the internet. OK. I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message. NOT OK! Now it's time for a lesson in the boot process, but I'm pressed time for today. Some essential points: The few System Files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) must be in the Root of the System Partition: the Active partition on the first HD, almost always Drive C:. The boot sector of the System Partition load C:\NTLDR, which uses C:\Boot.ini to find the Boot Volume and load WinXP from there and start it. The error message you saw says that the boot process cannot find an operating system in what it thinks is the System Partition. It's getting lost on its way to Drive C:. :( It's not a Windows problem, strictly speaking. It's a hardware/BIOS problem. The boot process can't find ANY operating system. Not WinXP, not Win9x, not even MS-DOS. Most likely, it's looking in the wrong place. Now you have to find out where it's looking and direct it back to your Drive C:. I am fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting it down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated windows shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working in it... Agreed. Whatever caused the problem, this wasn't it. So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot the system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate outside windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it built it into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery disk has only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and begin new install or format all drives and begin install... Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of WinXp the only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the system to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I want to at least try to recovery the system as it was... Hey, I just thought of something! When you used Disk Management to create and format the primary partition that became Drive D:, did you "Mark Partition as Active"? Each HD can have only ONE Active (bootable) partition at any one time. If you marked D: as Active, C: would have had to have lost that designation. The next time you booted, the system would have looked for NTLDR, etc., on Drive D:, the active partition. Not finding them there, it would have given you that "no operating system" message and died - just what you saw. I have to run now, but I'll bet that's the answer. Sorry to leave you at this point, but I have to run. I'll check back when I have time tomorrow. RC |
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