[McClane]

Hi, I own a Sony Vaio VGN-FS315S laptop, with Windows XP Home Edition, and have had it for around 2 years now. A few weeks ago after downloading one of those flash player upgrades, my computer froze and the only option I had was to hold down the 'ON' button to turn it off. When I restarted the laptop, the 'Vaio' logo appeared on the start up screen a lot longer than usual, and then went to a black screen showing the words:

Operating system not found

Nothing would get out of this so I ended up having to restart the laptop several times to find out that my restore system (usually booted by the F9 or 10 key) wasn't working. I was able to enter the BIOS through the F2 key, but little could be changed. The order of boot from the BIOS is set as:

Floppy Disk Drive
Optical Drive
Hard Disk Drive
Network

After trying various repair and boot discs I had found online, and a Windows XP recovery disc from my old desktop (since I don't have any for my laptop), still there was no change. I read up on this error message on the internet and found that other people had recommended using another hard drive. Therefore, I purchased a replacement hard disk drive for my Sony Vaio which is identical to the original. The hard drive is a:

Fujitsu 100GB MHV2100AT (Refurbished)

Replacing the hard drive appeared an easy enough task so I just done it myself. Now with the new drive in the laptop, I get the message:

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key
-

Something I should point out is that the old system recovery disc I previously used had no effect, but this time it did work and reached 100% completion. However, after prompting to restart the system and remove the disk on boot, I returned to the previous error statement of the system disk being invalid.

AHHHHHHHHHH!

Someone please help, I'm getting to the end of my tether with this laptop. I haven't exactly got much money at the moment to take it to a repair shop. Are there any restore discs online that will repair the problem. I'm assuming the new hard drive is fine since I have had more results with that. Although, I would be far more happy to get my old drive with my original files back if possible.

I urgently need my laptop back to complete Uni presentations, so would be extremely grateful to anyone who can help ASAP. Thanks.

[mctw]

your hard disk contains your operating system, by changing it for a new/different one, you dont have a operating system, hence 'invalid system disk'

you wont be able to use a system restore disk from a different pc either, as they generally only work with their intended machine.

your new disk will be working fine, so you can install a new copy of xp onto that if you wished and have a proper installation disk, or a restore disk for that laptop, not another machine.

as for the original disk, i dont see how a flash upgrade can corrupt a O/S to the point where its unbootable. do you know if you can get hold of a windows installation disk?

MCTW

[Litigation]

If you can borrow an XP disk you can usually use the repair console and "Fixboot", and "fixmbr" at the command prompt to repair windows if your hard drive didn't croak. Hard power downs will on occasion take out a windows file in the Master boot Partition and this is probably the issue..
Also "chkdsk /p" is good for checking the installation after using the other 2......