"Cannot Find Operating System"

[JoKickSButt]

Hey everyone. For awhile now every time I've turned my computer on it would take me to the OS screen where it gives me the "F1 to set up F2 to continue" option, I've just pressed F2 and it's worked fine. I knew it wasn't supposed to do that but I didn't see any problems with it in the way my computer ran so I didn't think about it. Other than the fact that it reset my clock, after every time I started it up, unless I went in through the start menu and told it to restart, then when it turned back on the clock would be an hour behind every time.

But...I woke up this morning and went to my computer, it's almost always on 'cause I rarely turn it off, but it was at the OS screen again. I figured it had restarted sometime throughout the night and pressed F2. Then it went to another all black screen and just said in white text at the top "Cannot Find Operating System."

I've tried turning it on and off a few times and now it's not even telling me that. After I hit F2 it goes to a black screen with a little blinking text thing in the corner but won't do anything.

Any help would be EXTREMELY appreciated. I'm a photographer and ALL of my work is on that computer. I was in the process of backing everything up on it but hadn't gotten very far yet. Like I said, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

By the way, I run on Windows XP Home Edition...or...did
--Jo

 

[VivianLeeMIT]

Did you ever get this solved?

 

[hamid14]

you will have to reformat, turn on ur pc, press ur boot menu button that takes u to the boot menu, switch the boot settings, put cd-rom first and restart computer.

 

[psyclops]

Hold on Hold on don't reformat yet. Sounds like you might have a cmos/bios battery problem first off. Thats may be why you have to hit f2 each time to boot the pc. With that said what could have happened is that in the bios the first boot disk is not your standard c: OS disk . your main hardrive could have been removed from the boot list.

Try re-booting your pc, when you get prompted hit the option that takes you into the bios. its usually f2/f1/f12 or delete once there go to your boot screen to make sure your hardrive is listed.