Vista - "Operating system not found" error

Hi everyone.

On Saturday my laptop died, it now gives the message "Operating System not found". I tried to reinstall Vista from the DVDs, but when I tried this there were no partitions loading up to install Windows to. I had a C drive and a D drive which were hard disk drives, Vista was installed onto C but now they have disappeared.

I know a little about computers but I'm not an expert. I'm assuming that my hard drive has failed, and when I was messing around with settings to try and get Vista to load up I did see the text "No hard drive". But is there any way of recovering the files which were on the hard drive? Or are they lost forever? Can I reinstall Windows? I'm so confused and don't know what to do!

Many thanks!

Right the same thing happend to me and i was gutted, I did something un-necerssery and re-installed windows, all you have to do is access the boot options menu when you turn your computer on keep pressing F8 until the boot options menu appears, by using the arrow keys on the keyboard select boot for hard drive (HDD) something like that anyway, please report back on that and if it works then I can tell you the soulution to make it so you do not have to do that every time you turn your computer on,

Thanks
Jamie

Thanks very much for your quick reply.

I loaded up the Boot Menu (it was F12 on my laptop) and it doesn't look great. This is what the screen says:

Choosing option 2 (not sure where option 1 is ?!?!) just leads to either "Operating System not found" or would just be like booting from the CD/DVD automatically (like reinstalling Vista when the DVDs are in). Enter setup leads to the default screen when I press F2 on startup.

I think the hard disk is dead. When I launch the setup screen (pressing F2) I can scroll across the tabs to get a screen called "Advanced". Near the top of the screen it says:

Considering it says "None" to whether there is a hard disk drive this worries me!

Thanks again for your quick reply. Do you think there is anything given this extra information that I can do to get Vista back and my files?

This seems quite strange that the system is not detecting the hard drive, have you tried booting in safe mode?

Seeing as it is a laptop, and those things can get bumped around a bit, it is a possibility that the hard drive died. If it were a desktop I would recommend switching the SATA/IDE port on the motherboard, but since it is not...that doesn't really come into play.

If it isn't showing up at all, and you have gone into the bios to make sure that it is in the boot order (which since the computer was working fine before I am assuming that it is), and you aren't comfortable opening it up yourself (I wouldn't be) then you will probably need to bring/ship it in to get serviced.

Thanks for the replies. I think I will need to take it to a computer specialist shop!