Upon booting up computer from having it off for a long time, it displays "Operating System not Found"

Question

Happpened once before, but my mom fixed it, and she's not in town anymore...I have Windows 2000, pentium II w/ 255 (?) Mhz, very old, slow computer, but just wanted to boot it up to grab some old things I left on it, any possible way to boot it up, it boots up to the screen w/ all the info on it that has the press (del) to enter setup, and you can that's where my mom did s/t in the Setup screen, I remember her putting things in a different order, but I don't remember and she can't either, unless she has the computer infront of her...hope yall can help!

Answer 1

I learned a thing or two about that before.

Go to settings when u barely boot it up, then start up sequence. then choose where u have the Operating System saved on. most likely the first hard drive (Hard Disk 0) or another Hard Disk 1) etc.. Which ever one has it, choose it as the first start up device. hope this helped..

Answer 2

You need to reload your operating system from the disk. If you still have it. You put it in and turn the computer on and the disk will do the rest. I don't recommend going into the setup screen unless you really know what you are doing. You could really mess things up.
The bios should still be fine anyhow. Just let the disk do it's thing.
You might also want to check the requirements listed on the label of the disk to be certain that operating system will run on a computer that slow. It should, but it is always good to check those things out when you are buying new software.
And just in case......Your operating system is your windows 2000 disk or the disk that came with your computer.

Answer 3

She probably changed the boot sequence. Tis is very easy to do, if you want to boot off a CD or DVD put the CD/DVD drive first and the hard drive second, if there is no disc in the drive it'll boot right off the hard drive. Otherwise make sure your hard drive is listed at the top of the list and reboot. If it still doesn't boot then it might be that the MBR (which tells the computer where to look for the OS) is corrupt. If you have a boot floppy you can fix this with a program called fdisk. Type fdisk /mbr If that still doesn't fix it it's probably something wrong with Windows. I suggest you use a Linux Live CD (free to download and loads your Windows HD right on the desktop) to rescue your data.

Answer 4

Your battery back up (little disc shaped battery on the motherboard) is probably dead. The system BIOS lost it's configuration.

You need to go through the BIOS and configure it. The primary thing you need to do is tell the BIOS what type of HD is installed. You may need to configure some other things, but without more info it's hard to tell. If you plan on using it in the future I'd replace that battery - not a big deal you can probably get the replacement battery at any drug store. Take the cover off and look on the motherboard for a silver disc shaped battery.