Hi all.

I need help on a problem. I sent my Pavilion notebook off to HP to get a hinge replaced, but I removed my hard drive before I shipped it. The Pavilion is back now, and I've reinstalled my hard drive, but when I try to boot up I get an error message 'operating system not found'.

I've looked around in BIOS Diagnostics, and discovered this: If I try a self test on the primary drive, I get an error message 'diagnostics not supported'. But if I do a self test on the secondary drive, the test runs okay, and inticates that the drive is okay.

My theory: HP temporarily installed a hard drive to test my notebook before sending it back, and my BIOS still thinks that the temporary HP had drive is my primary drive! And my own hard drive has been designated as a 'secondary drive'.

When I look in BIOS boot-up options, there is no hard drive option listed, only CD-ROM, Floppy, and Network Adapter. It's as though BIOS thinks there is no primary hard drive available ...even though MY hard drive is installed!

Can somebody please lead me from this thicket?? (I've tried -- three times!) chatting with an HP tech, but I just can't get them to understand the problem.

If I've posted to the wrong forum, can someone re-direct me?

Thanks,

Art

The BIOS should have an option to restore defaults. You might want to give that a try.

danzona,

I tried that, but the boot-up order list still doesn't include 'hard drive'. I suspect the BIOS is looking for a 'primary' hard drive, but my hard drive has somehow been designated as a 'secondary' hard drive, and the boot-up process ignores it.

Art

Are there any Jumpers on the drive? Check that they're set right.

New developments...

When I upgraded to Vista, I had created a set of WinXP recovery disks. I put disk 1 in, and a menu came up. I pushed 'Q' to quit, and the CD turned boot up back over to the hard drive ...and Vista came up normally! All my programs and data are intact, so I think the disk is fine.

Then I tried a re-boot, and I was right back to "Operating System not found" (like I had a floppy in).

With the Pavilion running normally (through use of the WinXP recovery disk again!) I flashed the BIOS (which went fine), and then I checked that the boot options were okay ...and they were.

Strangely, though, my hard drive is not listed on the 'Main' page of the BIOS.

I am really puzzled by this, and do not know how to put it right. But as long as I don't shut down my machine, everything is operating absolutely normally.

(As to jumpers, I'm familiar with their use in desktop machines, but I didn't think they were used in laptop hard drives. Am I wrong?)

Thanks for all the replies.

Art
(a little less stressed now!)

What pavillion model do you have?

as to the jumpers, I've never seen them on laptop HDDs before, but it was just a thought.

It is a Pavilion DV9010CA with a single 120GB HDD.

Earlier this evening I went back into the BIOS, selected the 'Secondary Hard Drive" (ie, my HDD) and did the Hard Drive Self Test, and it passed both the 'quick' test and the 'comprehensive' test.

Unfortunately, my HDD still does not appear in the BIOS system list.

But it's running perfectly ...I'm typing this on it right now!

OK - you tell me that you have the 1 HDD. From what I see on the specs for your machine, there are 2 Hard Drive bays, 1 is going to be Primary, the other Secondary. I know this may seem silly, but is your hard drive in the correct bay? have you tried swapping them?

Do I ever feel like an idiot.

I bought this machine because of the large, clear screen in order to work on photos. I wasn't even aware that it had two HDD bays. In a brain-dead state, I obviously removed my HDD from one bay, and, a month later when I got it back (HP lost it for a while!), re-installed in the other.

Everything, of course, now works just fine. Thanks, uniquestar, for the light tap on the head.

Art

We've all done it, I'm just glad its working again now!

I thought it was something like that, as it was being picked up perfectly as a 2nd HDD, and no 1st seemed to be available. I found about the 2 HDDs by looking at the assembly manual from the HP website.