Operating System not found error in Windows

Sometimes one gets a weird error while starting Windows based computer. Error says ‘Operating System not found’. Eruption of this error message stops you from accessing the system anymore.

As we know, partitions in a computer system are logical spaces in a hard disk. These are created to keep the system files and data files separated from each other. Keeping the system files away from the data files ensures that there is enough space for virtual memory paging and swapping. Also, if one of the non-system drives gets corrupted then other partitions do not get affected by this. However, windows partitions fall prey to corruption quite often.

There are various reasons for this corruption to occur including power outages, improper system shutdown, damaged system files, virus infections, software failure, malfunction, etc. In such cases, you can take help of third application to perform Windows recovery in most prudent and affable manner. After Windows recovery, you are able to get back recently deleted files, deleted partition or corrupted partitions.

Here we will be taking a practical example of this error situation. You are unable to boot your Windows XP system. An error message is getting displayed, that is:

Operating system not found
Missing Operating System

When you boot your system from the Recovery Console to recover its functionality, the following error message is displayed:

Setup did not find any hard drives installed on your computer.

Reason behind this issue

There could be the following reasons for the aforementioned error messages:

• The hard disk is corrupted.

• The BIOS settings are configured in a way that the BIOS are unable to detect the hard disk.

• The Sector 0 of the physical hard disk has a corrupted MBR.

• An incompatible partition is marked as Active.

• The partition containing the MBR is not active anymore

These are some of the main reasons that could result in occurrence of this error messages. However, there could be some other reasons too.

Resolution for this

To resolve these error messages, you should use the following methods:

• Check the BIOS settings - You should check the BIOS settings and ensure that the BIOS enlists and recognizes the hard disk.

• Use Recovery Console - You should use the fixmbr command in the Recovery Console to repair the MBR of the system drive.

These methods will be able to resolve the issue. However, if you still are not able to resolve the issue then you should use third-party Windows partition recovery software to recover partition. Such effective tool is able to safely recover trapped data using high level scanning algorithms.

Windows recovery software helps to recover data from the partitions which gets corrupt due to bad sector in the disk, partition table corruption, formatting of a Windows installed hard drive or accidental file deletion. It is one the best option to deal with ‘Operating System not found’ error in Windows. The lost and deleted data are successfully retrieved from Windows partitions created using FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 file system.