Oprating system not found on Acer Aspire 1640

jfrschnell · 04-17-2009, 11:33 AM

Hi there,
I got a laptop from a friend. It's an Acer 1640. It's not the best machine but with Linux on it it would be just a great stuff.

Before it had Windows on it but there was a problem with the IDE disc (80GB). Because it wasn't working I bought a new one a PATA/IDE of 120GB.
I installed Ubuntu on it and was just great. Now the problem is.... "Operating system not found". The BIOS doesn't recognize the disc as well. It boots from a flash drive but when it comes to the disc itself... always leave me alone...
Does anyone as experienced this before? I need help.
Thanks in advance.
Jo

MS3FGX · 04-17-2009, 11:35 AM

If it is saying "Operating System not Found", then it is trying to boot to the HDD, not the disc. Make sure the boot order is set properly, and that you burned the CD/DVD properly.

Though if it can boot from a USB device, you could just install that way.

jfrschnell · 04-17-2009, 12:16 PM

Hello thanks for the reply.
Well I did what you suggested before. The boot order normally is from HDD then CDROM and then all the other stuff. But even though I make it I get always the same error... Operating system not found.
By the way... what about flashing the BIOS. I read on the website that they have a BIOS update.
The problem is... I want to flash it but don't know how... any suggestion?
Thanks once again.

MS3FGX · 04-17-2009, 12:35 PM

So you have the CDROM drive set as the first boot device, and still get that error?

Are you able to boot to any other CDs? Does the Ubuntu boot disc work in any other computer?

jfrschnell · 04-17-2009, 01:15 PM

Yes on my desktop ubuntu boots from live CD.
On the ACER laptop it works as well. The problem it doesn't boot from the HDD. If I use a bootable ubuntu flash drive it works fine.
All I want is to boot Ubuntu from the Hard drive which is not happening.
All the tme I get "Operating system not found". It's not recognizing the hard drive.
Thanks for the help

MS3FGX · 04-17-2009, 01:21 PM

So you have installed Ubuntu onto the machine, but it won't boot?

jfrschnell · 04-17-2009, 01:38 PM

Sorry but I unfortunately wrote a report instead of a reply...
The thing is that Ubuntu is installed on the HDD but it doesn't load from it.
The live CD could detect the HDD but the BIOS doesn't do it. Maybe thats the reason why....

farslayer · 04-17-2009, 01:55 PM

Grab the supergrub boot disk and see if it will allow you to boot into the installed OS on the laptop.

No Operating System found, sounds to me like Grub was not installed on the MBR of the hard drive.

Here is how I fixed a similar issue on a new install of Debian using the Supergrub boot disk..
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...l-bug.-708077/

lghenriquez · 06-25-2010, 06:42 AM

It may be a little too late, but I believe I have fixed this problem. You may notice that the "Operating system not found" issue comes and goes in some machines. I changed the HDD twice and it always came back one way or another so I began looking at a faulty connection and indeed the solution was not too connect the HDD all the way but to leave a minimal distance, something in the range of 1mm and make sure that it would stay like that by tightening the screw that holds it in place on the other end of the HDD. So far this has worked for me. Again, I tries playing with the GRUB, the MBR, BIOS, changing HDD, and nothing else had worked.

Hope this helps.