"missing operating system"...why?

[Jon Hunt]

A PC with Intel PII 300MHz CPU, an Intel LX440 chipset motherboard, and a Seagate 8.4 GB hard drive, ocassionally reboots with the "missing operating system" message. I have a boot partition save/restore utility on it now, due to this happening before. Now it has done it again. It seems to lose the partition info. Any idea why this is occuring?

[fishboy]

my first guess would be a virus. Again, this is just a very quick guess

[Cristi]

Just for the record, something similar happened to my old computer based on TX-PRO Intel chipset w/P 200 MMX processor and a 1,2G. Cause? No virus, just my video board (Diamond Viper 4M V330) didn't like the system... :-(
Ocasionaly freezed the computer, no matter what program or command, even none. It was NOT any conflict in hardware, nor in software. Two times when I had to reset it, my HD had forgotten EVERYTHING on it, giving the happy indication at start :"No system installed. Please insert a boot diskete and press any key"....hahaha!
Just changed the video board with a cheap one (S3triov64) and everything was back to normal.
BTW, now the same Viper works in a Celeron based system with no problems!
Believe it or not!

[spdsk8r]

If it's not too much trouble, try formating the drive and then run FDISK... make a new boot sector, and format again. This worked for me last time I had this problem. When I would try to boot, It would report that there was no information on the drive when there really was.

[Jon Hunt]

One item of minimal importance....it is a Maxtor drive, not Seagate. Nevertheless, I checked, and re-checked for viruses, and none were found. I had installed a boot partition restore utility, due to it happening once before. It appears to restore the boot partition, but computer hangs right after reading the boot info. Norton Utilities saw a problem and said it fixed it, but to no avail. I ran Tiramasu, which is a drive recovery program, and it shows the data on the drive (after recovering), but to fix it requires paying a $95 registration fee for a one-time use. When the program shows the directory tree, you can see there are some directory name problems that it temporarily repaired. Bottom line is that the drive is seen, but can't be read, due to "invalid media type". FDISK shows the drive, but says the formatting type is "unknown", although it is FAT32. I could replace the drive and reinstall software, but am concerned as to why this is occuring. It will work fine for weeks or even months, then become unreadable on one reboot. I now have it attached as a secondary drive on another PC, but am still unable to read the media and doubt if it is a video card problem. I might be able to use DISKEDIT to repair, but it still may happen again. Any other suggestions?

[Jon Hunt]

Another note.....it's not that I can't make the drive useable, as re-formatting will do. It is that the data is lost when re-formatting, and until I find the cause, it may keep happening. Thanks again!

[jmeier]

I've see incorrectly partitioned drives have this problem. Also with you motherboard, if you have the harddrives 'autodetected' on startup that can cause problems as well (usually with the translation LBA). Defintely check for a virus. You might have a bad drive as well.