I had a new Hard Drive installed (abroad) on my laptop. Everything worked fine for a couple of days and then suddenly system crashed, I rebooted and I got the “operating system not found” error message. I simply switched off the laptop and rebooted after a while and all was well, for a day. The same problem occurred a day later, I was running scan disk and Windows froze. I rebooted and the “operating system not found error message” appeared. Since then everytime I boot the Compaq logo appears then the message “Operating system not found”

I downloaded a bootdisk from bootdisk.com and (got someone to check the bios ). It appeared that the new hard drive was not being recognised at all. It didn’t exist as far as the bios was concerned. Neither was the C prompt recognised.

Opened up the laptop and checked the cables and all seemed fine. Whats the next step?
Could it be that the hard drive setting were entered incorrectly in the bios. How can I check this.
The new hard drive is a IBM 10GB drive.
The laptop is a Compaq Presario 1683 AMD 333 Mgh
Operating system Windows ME. Installed by shop.
I don’t have any drivers/recovery CD’s or documentation as it was a 2nd hand laptop.

One thing to point is that when the drive was working I tried to defragment and it come up with error on hard drive. I ran scan disk and that was when the whole thing froze and died on me.

Im a complete newbie to computers so if anyone can give me easy instructions I would be incredibly grateful. How do I un-install and re-install my hard drive ?