Error loading OS

[speaky]

I was wondering if anyone could help me, when I turned on my Dell last night (Dell Dimension 2350) it gave me the error message "Error loading OS"?!?!?! I really don't want to loose any of my work!?!?!
I have Norton Antivirus but no firewall so I am worried it might be a trojan virus!?!?! Either that or I have recently installed a 120Gb hard drive which would be causing problems. Only problem is that I don't know how to identify the cause of the problem and hence the solution!!!

[ThRoNkA]

You need to be more specific. What did you do last before you shut down the pc? Any problems with that session?

You say you put in a hard drive, did you jumper it?

[Cowboybooter]

Welcome to XPC, speaky! :)

You say you recently installed a 120Gb Hard drive, was that as well as or instead of, the original?

What Operating system are you using?

Anything else you can tell us about the machine, and the last time you used it would be good!

:)

Bob

[speaky]

Thanks for your replies ;o)

The last time I used the PC was the night before last to check my emails on the internet, I got a couple of messages from my antivirus saying that a Trojan Virus had been deleted. I have had a couple of other viruses but they have all either been deleted or quarantined. One of the viruses that I got a few days ago was in win32 so I have a feeling it was a virus but I'm no expert!!! I am concerned that the antivirus had expired as I know it was due soon but I didn't think it was until the end of the month.

I am using XP for my OS and the hard drive that I installed was alongside the one that came with the computer. I have had no problems with it and I got one of my friends to check the installation over before I used it... I am not familiar with 'jumper', do you mean the master/slave bit?

[Mntsnow]

Yes Thronka was refering to the Master/Slave setting on the HD which is done thru a "jumper" that closes or opens pins to make the correct setting.

Have you tried booting the system up and right after the bios screen posting hitting the F8 key and then choosing either "Last Known Good Configuration" or "Safe Mode" ?

Have you tried booting the system up with the new additional HD disconnected?

[mulder149]

and along with Mntsnow said if you have no data on the new drive then install XP on it and make it master and see if that works, but if that is too much of a hastle first make sure you connected everything right inside the box, or double check it, also make sure you don't have a floppy in drive A:\ and last but not least try booting again. Most of the time at least the times I have seen these problems these things have fixed the issue at hand. If a virus has corrupted a file needed to boot the OS you will get an error on boot up that says blah blah blah is corrupt giving the path to the file. start with these things first, you should find a good fix for your problem but while you are troubleshooting these be sure you have your connection to the internet disconnected from your pc.

Nate

[pain_inbutt]

The way im reading what he said is that the hard drive has been in there a while and working right up until now is this right speaky??

Now when he turns on the machine and it boots up he is getting the error loading Os upon boot up. Is this right speaky?

Just trying to get a clarification here :)

[speaky]

I have tried all your suggestions and I'm not sure how but I've got my PC to load Windows at last. It involved disconnecting the new hard drive and turning on the PC. Some configuration settings for windows appeared, once they had run windows loaded fine. After that I reconnected the hard drive and it turned on fine... confusing as I don't think there was a error in the hard drive as I can read and write to it fine now.
So all in all I am unsure as to how I have fixed it but thanks for your help... ;o)