When my son (at college) boots up his Pentium PC (Windows 95), he gets "operating system not found." He also says he now hears an unusual noise coming from the PC. Suggestions?

Howdy, The hard drive could have died or is dying. My best advice is take it to a tech and have the hard drive tested or you can take Mr. Zorba's wonderful advice and Format the hard drive. But being serious, I would have the drive tested since he is knowing hearing noises that were not there before. Lets just hope he backs up his important data. Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude.

Sometimes the cable leading to the hard drive jiggles loose; that's always the first thing I check. But failing that, Kevin's probably right.

Well when I start up my computer it loads up and then after it says VIDEO BIOS Shadowpassed it stops and then like after 15 seconds I hear two beeps coming from the computer and then it says "Operating System Not Found." After that it just stays there and not even an A: prompt shows up it just freezes. I also tried to put the Windows Start Up disk when turning on my computer. The drive reads the disk but ignores it and just keeps on going and the "Operating System Not Found" message shows up. What should I do?

Hey, Here's my situation. I just installed a CD-Burner and had to completely reroute my entire drive settings. I made the burner slave off of the CD-ROM and made a zip drive slave off of my hard drive. Now I had to unplug my harddrive so I could attach a longer IDE cord so it would reach the zip drive. After finishing, I started it up and low and behold I get the message " Operating System not found" I went into the setup and it looks as if the hard drive is recognized as the primary source for the first IDE port and the CD-ROm is the primary source for the secondary port, however it still doesn't work... I'm hoping I didn't delete the drive. Anyway I'm pretty befuddled,and I still refuse to pay someone $50 an hour unless I absolutley have to, especially after the insult that was thrown at me a while ago. I was treated like a no nothing twit...well ok I am to a degree...but still... Any help on this matter would be greatly appreiciated. Thanks Again. -Jordan PS I'm sorry about the misspelling, it's late and I don't feel like checking them and changing them. Night.

I get the same message "Operating syste, not found". If I ctrl-alt-del I get the same message again, if I shut the power off on the power strip and turn it back on, the computer boots fine. Is that weird or what? Everytime I want to use my computer I go through this whole ritual. Turn in on, get the message, turn the power strip off and then on again. Then I'm up and running.

I have the same problem with my Sony VAIO. Every other time I get this message, then I turn the computer off and it restarts fine. My hard drive tests fine. What else could it be? Email me please.