hard drive problems

[bonnieg52]

how do i troubleshoot the hard drive ---i get the error message operating system not found

[mattie]

First thing to do. Switch your PC on, and go into the bios setup, usually by pressing either the F1 or Delete keys. You should see a message that reads "press Del to enter setup" or something similar. Look for a section that reads Autodetect hard disk drives and go to this. If a primary master is detected, exit and save setup. If not then you need to check the connections to the drive and listen to see if it is spinning. Let's assume that your hard drive has been detected and you still receive the same error message, then you will need a boot disk. If you have one then boot from the floppy disk, you may need to change the drive boot order in the bios first, then at the A: prompt type C: and press enter. If you can change to drive C: type dir and press enter. If the contents of the drive are displayed but your PC won't boot then the system files are corrupt and need to be replaced using a repair disk.