"Error loading operating system"... :(

Ok I am condensing/refreshing my information on this problem.

Problem: "Error loading operating system" - this appears during startup, after the devices are listed. Luckily I have a second hard drive and windows will not start on this drive. I'm thinking it has to do with the Master Boot Record (MBR), I need to reset it yet I have no clue how.

Symptoms - Computer would restart before entering the windows loading screen. BIOS recognized the hard disk (i.e. showed information about it,) yet the windows start up disk did not recognize it. I'm assuming the hard drive has a corrupted file or something and it has failed.

What I've done to get windows running on the second hard disk - set boot device priority to the second hard disk, jumper settings etc, removed the failed hard disk from the system, cleared cmos, reformatted many times, deleted partitions/recreated partitions, tried the /fixmbr /fixboot in windows xp recovery, ran a win98se boot up disk. (This did not work, the computer booted to a windows 95 command prompt, the DIR shows the boot98se.exe file but it will not load the file. It says "This program can not be run on MS-DOS." I've also put a version of MS-DOS on a disk but the floppy would not recognize it. In the windows 95 command prompt, it will not allow me to change directories to the C:\ directory so I can run an fdisk on it.

I've tried many options, i've been researching on the web for many hours. I would be very grateful if someone could help me out, maybe even out of the forums (phone?) Gawd, i'd hate to have to either take this in to a service technician (because i'm trying to become one) or buy a completely new motherboard (this option does not help me learn how to fix this.)

The problem I think is that Windows will install the boot record to the first hard drive by default, and it is not capable of booting off of secondary drives with out some bios setting changes. So if you have the old drive plugged in, and it was detected as the first drive, then later it wouldnt get detected, then that would couse your problem....

Make sure the first drive is unplugged then boot to the windows cd and start the recovery console and run "fixmbr" and then "fixboot" and try again. I suspect that should fix the problem for you. Also you might want to try setting the first boot device in the bios to HDD.

If that doesnt work, then the next thing to do is boot up memtest and test your memory. If that passes then check you voltages and see if they are within normal range.

you should be able to set boot device in the bios. thats what i do to go between vista and xp (i installed vista on a 2nd hd with all other drives disconnected, it can keep its fingers out of my boot records thank you very much)

Ok, here is what i have done so far.

First, i went into the recovery console, then did the fixmbr, fixboot. I booted up my bios to change the boot priority from cdrom to hard disk. I'm still getting the Error loading operating system each time. If my boot priority is set to cdrom it will get to the device listings and say "Press any key to boot from cd" then a series of ....... will appear then it will say "error loading operating system." Just for chance I swapped the position of the second hard drive to the position the previous hard drive occupied, also nothing.

How do you set the boot device?

Can anyone else chip in with advice?

Make sure the bad drive is totally unplugged.

Then you may want to clear the cmos on your board and reset the boot device.

If that doesnt work, and you still have the same problems, the next thing to do would be check the voltages to see if they are in line with what they should be.

I've found an iso of the windows98se boot disk, burned it to a cd and tried it out. It runs through a lot of things and then shows A:\. DIR shows 38 some odd files.... included is fdisk, so i'm stuck as how to load windows 98 from here. Anyone? Anyone?