Hi, All i have read a lot about this on this forum but wanted to ask this question. this happens a lot when it does i just turn it off.
and wait for a while and reboot and sometimes it will boot and sometimes not.
i have checked the cables they seem ok.i checked the bios battery it seems ok. could it be the hard drive it is old.wanted to ask before i bought a new Hard drive. sometimes it will work for several days or even a week or so. would appreciate your advice. Thanks Tomd

How did you check the BIOS battery? Best way is to just replace it as they are very inexpensive. Offload voltage readings can be deceptive.

This is not the usual symptom of HD failure. If it shows no dud clusters when you run scandisk then it is probably OK.

DerekW

Tom - just to be safe, run scan disk, system file checker, and scanreg /fix. These are three nice little diagnostic tools that everyone should have in their bag of tricks!!
You may have a corrupted startup file and hopefully SFC will find it. A last ditch effort, and I mean last ditch, is to do an overlay install of your O.S.

As already given, scanreg /fix is always worth a go.

If you are new to sfc and plan to use it please see this post first (my collation and WhitPhil's additions at the end):
SFC CAN GET IT WRONG

DerekW

"No Operating System found" does not, of itself, warrant SFC, which is used to check the integrity and version of Windows files (and that is not a Windows message, it comes from the BIOS)

SFC should not be a 'kneejerk' suggestion - your "little bag of tricks" (gosh, that's cute) is worthless if you don't know what they're for

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

Report Offensive Follow Up For Removal