I've got a nasty problem. When I restart my computer, all I get is a black screen with the message "Unable to Find Operating System."

However, the computer will boot up normally if I insert an XP boot diskette into drive A:

I've even tried restoring my C: drive from a Norton Ghost image. I go through the whole process successfully, but still I just get the black screen with "Operating System Not Found" unless I insert my XP boot diskette again, and then it boots normally to the restored image.

But unless I start the computer with my XP boot diskette in drive A:, it won't boot and I that error message again.

Help!Is your hard drive dead? I would check the BIOS/setup screen to see if the drive is being recognized. What happened prior to all of this?No, I don't think the hard drive's dead. As I state above, when I use my XP boot diskette in drive A, it boots OK (from drive C). But without the boot diskette, nothing - just that black screen error message.

I've even tried restoring my C drive from a Norton Ghost image. I go through the whole process successfully, but still I just get the black screen with "Operating System Not Found" unless I insert my XP boot diskette again, and then it boots normally to the restored image.

It happened after I was attempting to make ANOTHER more recent Norton Ghost backup. That process failed and now I'm in this mess.

The OS and everything is there and boot up just fine if I insert my XP boot diskette in drive A, but if I try to boot without it, I get that error message on a black screen and that's it.


I also tried this, but it made no difference. I can boot from the CD, too. I tried the procedure in the XP CD's recovery console described in the link. But after doing that, the problem persists: if I don't use my XP boot diskette in drive A, it won't boot.

Here's something that got me wondering: this happens even now that I've restored my C: drive to a previous Ghost image backup that I know works because I've used it before successfully. So the problem may not be any file in Windows, but something before that?
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No, I don't think the hard drive's dead. As I state above

You can somehow sense if the HDD has given up the ghost?

That's cool. Where do you learn that?

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

No, I'm no expert, but since my OS is on my C drive and it boots into windows normally once I use my XP boot diskette, the drive appears to be in working order. Also, Partition Magic lists it as "healthy." But thanks for your your help, Raptor.


Ok, Patio, here's something odd: a search of my C: drive turned up no boot.ini file, only a boot.ini.backup file in C:/Windows/pss/

In Notepad it reads as follows:

Could it be that my boot.ini file is missing? How would I fix it?

You could also change the file extension removing the - .backup - part and try re-booting as long as the ntldr and ntdetect.com files are present.

Thanks for your help.

Right now, none of those three files shows up in just C:

I did a search and found ntldr and ntdetect.com in C:\WINDOWS\SevicePackFiles\i386

As I mentioned earlier, I found boot.ini.backup in C:\WINDOWS\pss

Just to get this straight, should I:

Copy those three files to C: and then rename boot.ini.backup to boot.ini?