I HAVE A LAPTOP THAT STARTS BUT IT TELLS ME TO INSTALL AN OPERATING SYSTEM ON THE HARD DISK.

Hello,
Operating system not found simply means that the laptop cannot detect that there's an operating system installed on your laptop.
It's either the hard disk got disabled in BIOS or the installed windows is corrupted. You might need to check in BIOS if the hard disk is still detected. If it is, make sure that on the Boot options, hard disk is selected as the first boot option. If it is, then that means that the windows installed on your laptop is corrupted therefore you might need to install windows using the recovery discs of your laptop.
By the way, to go to BIOS start tapping on F10 once the laptop starts to boot up.
Let me remind you that by doing this it will erase everything on the hard disk.
Good luck!

Your hard drive may be faulty, this is why the Windows operating system not found.
Go into the BIOS and see if the hard drive is detected, if not reseat the hard drive and boot up again.
If the Windows operating system not found then most likely the hard drive is faulty and to get the Notebook working again, replace the hard drive, install Windows on the new hard drive plus the HP desktop device drivers and your programs.

You can download the device drivers from the Compaq/HP WEBsupport/download page. Make sure
you select your model laptop and the Windowsdrivers you require and install them. Click on this link to download thedrivers: -
http://welcome.hp.com/country/au/en/cs/support.html

Goto bios setup and press auto harddisk detection, afterthat press F10 to save and exit. then again reboot your system.

Do you need anything that is stored on the crashed hard drive? If so, you need to get an adapter for the drive and connect it to a desktop pc as the 'd:' disk. then copy any files you can access that you need saved.
Re-install the drive into the laptop, use "FDISK /MBR" from a floppy drive or a USB drive set up as a boot disk to re-partition it, and install the master boot record, and then boot the CDrom to install your operating system afresh.
The error message you are getting is caused by the 'restore' program trying to use the C: disk programs, and they are not there. I think you may have a bad hard drive, as usually the programs will be found.
You need to find out if the disk is really really bad or just needs to be re-formatted. Follow the above steps to determine if you need a new drive or not.
tom

On my Compaq Presario Windows 7 laptop, I have got "Operating System not found" error, to fix problem,Windows Boot Genius helped me finally!

If the error message says "No operating system found" it is most likely a faulty disk controller or a faulty hard disk.
Reseat the hard disk, if this doesn't work you need to test the hard disk another way. Remove the hard disk and connect it to an USB hard disk adapter and connect it to a working computer's USB port. If this computer sees this as an external hard drive and you can open the folders and files then the hard disk is OK and the fault is the disk controller on the the 4115c laptop.
If the hard disk is not detected then the hard disk is faulty. You need to install a new hard disk, install Windows and the laptop's device drivers and programs to get a working laptop again.

The Thinkpad T23 is old, and would not worth fixing. Save your money on a new one.
The problem with your laptop is that the hard disk or the disk controller has failed and therefore cannot find the operating system on the hard disk. The error message states that it can't see the operating system that is on the hard disk.
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If the hard disk is the only thing that has failed then you can buy a new hard disk and install Windows operating system on it to get a working laptop again. You will also most likely need to download the device drivers (ie. video, audio, modem, LAN adapter etc.) from IBM to install after the Windows installation.

Try to borrow a 2.5" drive or get a cheap one from a computer market and fit it to your laptop to see if the BIOS can detect the hard drive. If it works then outlay some money to buy a decent size hard drive, no point wasting money if the laptop is faulty.
.

This is caused by :-
1. Your hard disk has failed.
2. Your BIOS settings for the hard drive has been altered
3. Your hard drive has been wiped or someone or a virus program that has deleted critical files.

Go into your BIOS setup to check the hard disk settings, if possible see if it will auto detect the hard drive.

Also boot up with a DOS disk run FDISK to see if you can detect a hard disk, partitions etc.

If the hard disk appears OK you may be able to do a disk repair, most likely you would need to re-install the operating system and the laptop drivers for video, audio, LAN, modem etc.

Bad connection from your hard drive to the laptops motherboard. ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/62p9631.pdf page 63 tells you how to remove the hard drive - I would take it out, clean the connections with rubbing alchohol, and FIRMLY put it back and see if it will come up then.

On my ThinkPad Notebook Windows 7, I have got "operating system not found" error, to fix problem, Windows Boot Genius helped me finally!