PC not recognizing windows?

lewis2701 · 3 Aug 2015 at 13:15

Wondering if anyone could provide any assistance here;

Turned my PC on the other day and during the post screen it said something like 'Missing operating system'. I've had a little play around with boot priorities etc but no luck. Any ideas?

Drizmod · 3 Aug 2015 at 13:19

What OS is installed? Have you changed/moved/removed any physical drives? Does the drive that has the OS installed on show up in the BIOS?

lewis2701 · 3 Aug 2015 at 14:56

Windows Vista (not the PC listed in sig) - no drives have been touched and yes it still shows up in BIOS.

koolpc · 3 Aug 2015 at 15:04

Could be that a 'bug' has got into the system! Corrupted! You may have to try a re installation of the OS.

Drizmod · 3 Aug 2015 at 15:09

lewis2701 said:
Windows Vista (not the PC listed in sig) - no drives have been touched and yes it still shows up in BIOS.

You dont have any USB pens or drives plugged in? Did you make sure your OS drive is the first boot drive in the list in BIOS? You may have to do a repair using the Vista Disc if you still have it

lewis2701 · 3 Aug 2015 at 15:19

Nothing else is plugged in and the os drive has boot priority.

holygamer · 4 Aug 2015 at 05:16

How many hard drives to you have installed on your PC? It's possible you've got too many drives connected to 1 of the sockets of your power supply. It might be fine one day then another day your PC won't boot. Buy extra cables for the other sockets of the power supply and spread the drives evenly over the sockets.

riskyfrisky · 4 Aug 2015 at 11:09

^ I can't see it being that but, if you do have multiple drives, disconnect one or two of them and see if the boot problems disappear.

Maybe try a repair with the Windows disc if you have it. Perhaps some of the boot files have corrupted.

lewis2701 · 30 Aug 2015 at 11:15

Ended up buying an SSD for it and just cloned my main PC's SSD. Connected it up booted it and it loaded right up to the password screen, where it rebooted and said something like 'Windows error, this may have been caused by a software change'. Anyone got any ideas? I'm just about to reformat the SSD and try another cloning software as I lost my windows 7 disk in a house move & don't have any USB pens to use.

bledd · 30 Aug 2015 at 11:30

Just buy Windows 10

DarthTweak · 30 Aug 2015 at 19:10

Insert the installation disc during bootup and see if that helps

Glaucus · 30 Aug 2015 at 19:18

I've had the same twice, both times it turned out my ssd was half dead. Still kind of showed im bios but didn't work.
One was replaced on warranty, the other just had to replace myself as it was outside warranty.

andy_mk3 · 30 Aug 2015 at 19:22

lewis2701 said:
Ended up buying an SSD for it and just cloned my main PC's SSD. Connected it up booted it and it loaded right up to the password screen, where it rebooted and said something like 'Windows error, this may have been caused by a software change'. Anyone got any ideas? I'm just about to reformat the SSD and try another cloning software as I lost my windows 7 disk in a house move & don't have any USB pens to use.

If you've lost the W7 disc then you can just download the ISO for free and use that, and use your existing key to install.