HELP Where is my OS??

fly747ie

I recently installed norton ghost onto my laptop, last night i tried to back up my C drive, i got to the part where it said that i needed to make a bootable floopy disk, so i went looking for a floopy disk.

By the time i got back to my Laptop it had re-booted itself (i think it was windows automatic updates kicking in), now all i get is a black screen saying that there is no OS.

What will i do??

thank you in advance

Tom Dunne

Check if it is trying to boot from the CD - remove the CD an try booting again.

fly747ie

i have tried all them kind of things to no avail, im in a panic

Tom Dunne

Do you have a Windows disk? If so, you may be able to do a repair installation.

Hopefully, it may only be the boot sector thats buggered (and your files may be recoverable).

fly747ie

i didnt get a disk when i bought the laptop, is there anything i could do to get my files back

Tobias Greeshman

Have none of your mates or relatives got a Windows XP (or whichever version of windows you need) CD?

Tom Dunne

fly747ie wrote:

i didnt get a disk when i bought the laptop, is there anything i could do to get my files back

There are several methods we could use, it depends on how techie you are

You could get a boot CD off the cover of a Linux magazine and boot into Linux. Then you could browse the hard-drive and pull your files off it to either a memory stick, CD-R or even file storage on the Internet.

Another option would be to take the hard-drive out and put it into an external case, hook it up to another computer and pull the files off that way.

fly747ie

so is there no program that can recover my files thru dos? is it easy to remove my laptop hard-drive and put it into an external case??

Tom Dunne

You could get an external case like this and simply plug it into another PC via the USB ports. It will show up as another drive, such as drive E: or F:

Removing the laptop drive is generall quite easy. We have a number of threads over on the laptop forum about this kind of problem, so have a look over there too.

All going well, you should be able to simply copy the files from the laptop drive to the PC by just dragging and dropping.

That's assuming Ghost hasn't wiped everything.

TBH, start off with the Linux boot disk and see if you can actually see the files first. Then decide which would be easier.

fly747ie

i have an existing external already, could i just use that

Tom Dunne

Probably not.

It may be a 3.5" drive, laptop drives are 2.5".

Anyway, I wouldn't risk damaging your current external unless you were very confident and knew what you were doing.

fly747ie

so is there no software program anyone can recommend to me that can guareentee retrieval of my files