I have a laptop computer that the hard drive failed and I had to remove it. I got a hard drive on a usb port. the bios is boot settings are of the following: * cd/dvd drive * removable device* * 1st hard drive * 2nd hard drive the bios is not able to boot from cd but I have a boot manager that will let me boot from usb, but the boot manager is on a cd I tried the cd on a different computer and it worked. When I go to boot it from a cd on my laptop to boot the hard drive on a usb port it says "operating system not found" I have windows xp pro already installed on the usb hard drive and its ready to go. the laptop computer is a gateway solo 9500 laptop. is there anyway I can get the computer to boot to that cd. I really need some help and can't afford to buy a laptop hard drive. I will be really thankful for any help I can get. antibot215

you replaced an internal laptop drive with an external usb drive? under my bios, i can choose wich device to boot from, weather it be a specific cd/dvd drive, either hard drive, or a flash drive. Hope that helps you in the least bit. Also on a side note, im assuming you have a xp cd and have that in the drive when trying to boot.... otherwise an empty usb drive is well, useless. Beast Desktop Intel Q6600 G0 @ 2.4ghz Evga 680i Evga 8800GTS 640mb/320bit 4096mb G-skill 1x 160gb | 1x 500gb 750w corsair psu

i have and operating system already installed on the usb drive. I have tried everything I possibly could think of. I just need to get past that "operating system not found" message if there is anyway I can get past it I should be fine. I think it keeps looking for the internal hard drive that is not there any more. I just need find someway to get around the message so I can boot to something. if anyone knows of a way to get past this message setting or what not I would love to hear from you. Thanks for the help I have got so far from the responses. antibot215

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... "Operating System Not Found" or "Missing operating system" error message when you start your Windows XP-based computer

are you sure the image on the flash drive is bootable?

yes. I have a cloned of a hard drive that has a working and fully operational operating system in it and the program that I am using works 100% because I have used it on one of my other hard drives and I am using the hard antibot215