Laptop/Operating System Not Found

conjon

Hi,

I'm hoping for some guidance from the more technically minded than myself! I had to replace the internal hard drive on my laptop last night. Once I'd that done, I turned on the laptop and received an "Operating System not found" message. I don't think I received a recovery disc with the Laptop, and looking at the Sony website this morning, it looks like Sony don't provide them (as you've to create them yourself). Can anyone guide me as to how to get around this? I did upgrade to Windows 7 last year, so if I use this disc will this get me around this issue? With the exception of putting the hard drive in, I've not been able to do anything further. We're without a PC in the house right now, so I'm anxious to get this fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Conor.

tonto2010

Yeah you need to run a fresh install using the disk, take a look at this link below and follow the instructions under:
"Using the Custom installation option if no operating system is installed"

You need to tell the laptop to boot directly to the cd and ignore the new hard drive at boot. If its a Dell you need to press f12 at boot and choose the cd-rom drive. It depends on the manufacturer though.

conjon

Thanks Tonto. I will try that this evening when I get home from work. It's a Sony laptop.

Much appreciated,
Conor.

tonto2010

If you cant get to the boot selection you may need to change the boot order in the System Setup.

Press f2 at startup and look for an option similar to "boot order" or "boot sequence" in the setup menu. Make sure the cd-rom is at the top of the list, save your changes exit and the laptop should automatically run the setup from the disk.

mp22

If you are trying to do a full install of win 7 with a upgrade disk you might run into activation problems,you need to get a vista or xp disk and install that first(the OS that your laptop came with)activate with the key (on the sticker underneath laptop) then upgrade to 7 using the upgrade disk.

U_Fig

also after installation you might want to go to the sony site and install the drivers...even tho windows 7 will find generic drivers for most of your hardware..companies sometimes tweak drivers that may give you better performance from some hardware..

conjon

Using the Windows7 disc worked, thanks to everyone for their feedback.

Could I ask one final question, as I had Vista on the laptop when I bought it, I only bought the upgrade version of Windows. When I went to input the registry key last night it wouldn't work. From looking at the Microsoft website, this is down to the fact that I don't have an OS on the laptop already. What Microsoft state is that you need to install your previous version of Windows and then do a reinstall of 7 from there. Given that I don't have a recovery disc to reinstall Vista, is there anyway around this? I did a restore last night once I had 7 installed. Will this get me around the problem, or will I loose everything in 30 days?


U Fig - thanks. I will take a look at that this evening.

Cheers,
Conor.

mp22

Google "how to do a clean install of windows 7 with upgrade media"

conjon

mp22 wrote: »

Google "how to do a clean install of windows 7 with upgrade media"

Mp22 - many thanks.

I did find the following article on winsupersuite:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media

Within the article they do give a workaround that Mircosoft has approved (registry hack). The second part of the hack states as follows:

Open the Start Menu again and type cmd in Start Menu search to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose "Run as administrator." Handle the UAC prompt.
In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm

What's confusing me is that when I type the cmd command, all I get is c/users/conor.

Any ideas as to how I get the display the shortcut in the Command Line Utility?


Thanks in advance,
Conor.

mp22

The cmd there on about lives in start-all programs-accessories-command prompt(right click)

conjon

mp22 wrote: »

The cmd there on about lives in start-all programs-accessories-command prompt(right click)

Thanks mp22. That's worked.

Much appreciated,
Conor