Operating system not found (Vaio vpcec4s0e)

[mlawrenson86]

Hello

I have a Vaio vpcec4s0e and I’m having problems with it. One day, the computer turned off and when I turned the laptop back on it says ‘Operating System Not Found’ – This happened when I first purchased the laptop and Sony kindly took it back and replaced the hard drive and everything was fine for around a year and now I’m back in the same situation, except I’m under no warranty.

I then went out and purchased a replacement hard drive, a Seagate 500GB 7200rpm which I used my recovery disc’s to install the operating system and inclusive bloatware. 72 hours later, during a skype call, I got a blue screen of death, rebooted the computer…. Operating System Not Found…

(During this re-installation from the recovery discs, I noticed the installation bar froze for some considerable time and gave me error messages, failing to install McAfee and Adobe Elements (if I remember correctly) – Once the installation had completed, the computer was running at 2.3GB RAM resources on idle)

So I took the hard drive back and got them to replace it with an identical hard drive, come home and installed with a fresh copy Windows, not using the recovery discs… Within 24 hours, again, on a Skype call, the computer shut off with the ‘Operating System Not Found’ message.

Now on each occasion, I have tried rebooting the system and sometimes the system detects the hard drive and boots up but mostly it doesn’t, so I am wondering if there is something more sinister with the computer or whether I need to do something different.

I really need some help. I have tried to ring Sony and they aren’t interested since I have replaced the hard drive, the closest repair Sony repair centre doesn’t get enough work from Sony, so they’re no longer interested and the second closest is in Blackpool, which is a good 75 mile one way trip.

Any help would be massively appreciated.

Thanks
Mike

[brrobin19]

Hi Lawrenson 86,

                             The reason your new replacement hard drive is not recognised by you computer

                              is that you have not used Management Tools on the computer to format and give

                              hard drive the identification such as C drive so that the computer can recognise

                              the hard drive. Once you hav done this you may want to use the same tool to partition

                              the hard drive into 2 partitions. Just remember to allow sufficent space on the Cdrive

                              to allow space for your recovery details.

                              Once you are up an runing normally, just remember to create recovery discs!

                                                                                                                   Brian Robinson

[Blencogo]

Hi Mike and welcome to the Sony User Community.

I assume you don't throw your Vaio around, so it looks like you have just been unlucky with the reliability of your HDD.

However, I am wondering if it is a poor connection between the hard drive and the motherboard that is causing an intermittent 'Operating System not found'. Hopefully, it is not a motherboard fault.

As your Vaio is no longer under warranty, you are not obliged to go to Sony for a repair and it may be worth getting a local reputable PC repairer to have a look and check the pins in the SATA interface are not bent and that the ribbon cable and the connection to the motherboard is OK.

Unfortunately, intermittent problems are the most difficult to fix.

Sorry, I can't think of an easy answer.