Working hard drive, but "Operating System Not Found". How to make visible to BIOS?
Solution 1:
One (or more) of three things probably going on here:
- The basic input/output system (BIOS) does not detect the hard disk.
- The hard disk is damaged.
- Sector 0 of the physical hard disk drive has an incorrect or malformed master boot record (MBR).
You could try testing the disk, but it's probably easier to slap in a new drive & save yourself the trouble.
Solution 2:
You might check the BIOS to see what the boot order is. If someone set it to only boot from CD or Network or might have set it to not boot from the hard disk. The other option I can think of is the hard drive boot sector is hosed.
Solution 3:
Are there any diagnostics on the laptop. Some like the Lenovo and Dell have a minimal diagnostic in the BIOS and then a diagnostic partition on the drive ( not any help if drive is bad) On a Dell you press F12 and on an IBM/Lenovo there is a dedicated button.
If there is a diagnostic, you can run that. Failing that, you can get a 2.5" to IDE adapter or 2.5 to USB at most computer shops and connect to a working desktop system and run a diagnostic on the drive. Some drive vendors like Western Digital and Seagate also have their own diagnostics. They only work with their drives I belive. I am sure there are lots of other tools for this but if you have a known good PC and attach the drive, you can eliminate all the laptop hardware in one test
Solution 4:
Agreeing with other posters that the problem is likely in the drive hardware. If you have another laptop (and feel brave) you could swap the hard drives (if they're both IDE). If the non-booting box detects the drive from the other one, then you know the problem is in the Toshiba drive. If your other laptop detects the Toshiba drive, you know the problem is in the non-working system. (This is a case of the "binary swap" test.)
Back up the known good drive before trying this!