Question "An operating system wasnt found" after partition and BIOS change

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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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Hi everybody,

Im in serious trouble with my daughter as ive messed her her beloved gaming PC.

Yesterday she was moaning about keeping her school work seperate from her games so on her 1TB HDD i made a partition for her to store her work. After she turned the computer off and on again a massage came up saying

"An operating system wasnt found. Try disconnecting any drives that dont contain an operating system"

I paniced, she had a go at me and it was WW3 for a moment. I went into the BIOS to see if the HDD was still listed and it was and to see if it was in the correct boot seqence and it was. This is where i think ive messed up, i changed a few setting on the boot up setting- it was something like legacy and another open.

After a bit of googling i read something about the partition i created was being used to boot windows 10 and because it only contained school work it wouldnt boot. So i went in the she and dug out an old Windows 7 PC and took the HDD from my daughters PC and hooked it up. I went into disc management and formatted the partition and then extened the volume on the main C drive to take up the deleted partition storage space.

This evening i put the HDD back into the gaming PC and booted it up only to be greeted with-

"Reboot and select proper boot device"

I went back into the BIOS and its saying the HDD is there and its 1st boot priority but its not evening spinning. I changed a few more settings but not sure what and how i did it. I also tried the setting that allows you to load up from a previuosly working BIOS set up but that didnt work either.

I dont know much at all bout computer and their spec and all i know is that its runnig windows 10 and has a gigabyte ga-b85-hd3 motherboad. Its not a up to date modern gaming PC by any means but she loves it and if ive lost all her games and work i might as well leave the country.

Can anybody push me in the right direction on how to fix this?

Ive just remembered that the HDD had 3 partiitions- OS, Main C drive and an empty unallocated partition which i what i activated

Many thanks
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Any "googling" you've done is totally irrelevant.

They, and we, have zero idea of what you've actually done.
Leading to no real idea of how to walk this back. If that is indeed possible.

I suppose it would be silly of me to ask if there is any sort of backup of this?
At least her schoolwork?
 
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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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Hi

No nothing was backed up, i was foolish and thought i was being clever. I have done the same thing on old computers in the past ( windows 7 ) and never had an issue.

The HDD is showing up and all the files when i connect it to the old win 7 PC i have so could possibly access and save if i can find the files. Nothing was saved on the partition i created on the daughters PC
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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justin1978 said:
Hi

No nothing was backed up, i was foolish and thought i was being clever. I have done the same thing on old computers in the past ( windows 7 ) and never had an issue.

The HDD is showing up and all the files when i connect it to the old win 7 PC i have so could possibly access and save if i can find the files. Nothing was saved on the partition i created on the daughters PC
Click to expand...
The ONLY thing that is really important is her personal school docs.

All else can be reinstalled, including games.


Do NOT attempt to boot from this drive in a different system.
Access it as a secondary drive.
Locate and save her school docs off to some other physical drive.

We can move on from there.



Backups are like car insurance.
Absolutely needed, and you can't do it after the crash.
 
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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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Thanks for your reply.

I made sure when i connected the gaming PC HDD to the donor PC it was as a secondary storage device. I dont think it would of booted up anyway as the donor PC is old.

I have located her important stuff and saved them onto a USB drive.
 
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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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I know you said not to google the issue but i had already searched and i found something that might be of help.

The HDD is 1TB, there is a small partition for the OS ( windows 10) and then the main bulk of the storage which from memory was about 800GB but there was an unalocated partition of about 40GB that was unused so i allocated it as drive "D"

After the first error message about " An operating system wasnt found. Try disconnecting any drives that dont contain an operating system" I took the HDD out and put it into the donor PC and deleted the partition and the expaned the main "C" drive to utilize the 40GB.

I read somewhere that if a partition is too large then it wont boot?

Would that explain why there was an unused and unallocated section of the drive?
 
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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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Is there no way of cloning the OS partition on the HDD and putting it onto the SSD?

If i cant get the gaming PC to boot then i wont be able to get the Windows product key as there is no sticker on the PC with it on. I think the PC may of originaly come with WIN 8 as there is an option in the BIOS to boot from WIN8 or other and other was selected
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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justin1978 said:
Is there no way of cloning the OS partition on the HDD and putting it onto the SSD?

If i cant get the gaming PC to boot then i wont be able to get the Windows product key as there is no sticker on the PC with it on. I think the PC may of originaly come with WIN 8 as there is an option in the BIOS to boot from WIN8 or other and other was selected
Click to expand...
Nothing can be suggested until we out here can actually see what is going on.

Withing the same system, the Windows license key is not needed.
And ignore any Windows 8 stuff.
 
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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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Ill get the screen shot of Disk Management and ill upload it later on today ( 1.30am here in the UK )

Im just hoping and praying that this can be sorted

Thank you for your help so far :)
 
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justin1978

Oct 18, 2022
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USAFRet said:
Sometimes, the nuclear option is the best option.
Click to expand...

Hi, sorry for the delaying in replying.

Update on the sitaution

I managed to fix the computer, im not sure exactly how i did it but its running perfect now. All i did was plug the HHD back into the windows 7 PC just so i could back up the important files. I went into disc managment again and just checked the OS partition to make sure it was still there which it was. I think i clicked on Activate partition which then swapped the main C drive to inactive so i switched it back again.

I was contacted by a friend who saw my SOS on facebook and i completely forgot he was head of IT at the local collage. He offered me an SSD and a copy of windows 10 for free as i had fixed his car in the past. All i had to do was take the PC to him and he would do the rest. So, i put the HDD back in my daughters PC and fired it up to kae sure everything was connected properly ( i have to take half the machine apart to get to the HDD) and low and behold i heard the usual sound from the DVD rom and then the winows screen. To say it was a relief was an understatment lol.

So from now on im not going to touch her PC ever again lol.

Thank you so much for your help mate, you a legend
 
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