Operating System not found puzzle

zerdna

Honorable
Mar 3, 2013
2
0
10,510
I am trying to resolve some very puzzling behavior of my failing laptop. Machine is the so called HP Pavillion dv9800 CTO Notebook. Originally installed OS was Vista, i used it as Linux machine for a while, until there were some crashes. I decided to keep it simple, removed Linux and installed Win 7. Machine started a couple of times, then i would get 'Operating system not found' message. Additional OS reinstall was not possible as it stopped seeing harddrive althogher in installation screen.

I took all that as an indication of a failed drive. I bought a new drive, installed Win 7 again. After i restarted i got the same thing -- 'Operating System not found' with the new drive. What's strange is that sometimes machine would start normally. At this point i don't know how to diagnose this and blindly checking things doesn't seem to work. I did do memory test and disk test. I also checked for BIOS update but didn't find any BIOS updates for this machine, although BIOS is several years old. My suspicion is that it could be either motherboard problem or maybe a connector between the hard drive and motherboard. Is there any intelligent way to diagnose this or at least check my suspicions without changing the board?

sorry for the long winded story, i am just at my wits end :)
 

ratedk

Distinguished
I think your dead on the money.
If your thinking about replacing the MoBo, your going to have a hard time finding a replacement that hasn't already failed for some reason or another and repaired. They will work, but don't count on them working much longer than they warranty them to.

Just google "dv series fail" and spend the next year reading about all the problems these boards had. If you've had yours working this long, be thankful :)
 

zerdna

Honorable
Mar 3, 2013
2
0
10,510


Yeah, i haven't read the stories, but these laptops tend to run so hot, you could fry eggs on them. This one actually stood a top a special cooling fan. In any event, almost as soon as i posted this, i realized that i as usual made things more complicated then necessary. If it's a motherboard connector, i could test it by installing hard drive into a different slot, there are two of them as i remembered staring at the bottom of the notebook right before throwing it out. So i did and it worked fine :).