Sony vaio Error

hey well i was playing around on my sony vaio all in one computer, and it prompted me to restart so i did and now the computer comes up with a error at startup saying cannot load operating system. This has left me confused and im not sure what to do. any help would be really appreciated as i need the computer for my job.

Thanks in advanced.

 

What's the error it comes up with (exactly)?

What did you change before the restart? Do you have a recovery disk that Sony gave to you? Have you backed everything up recently? (You might have to start again).

 

the exact error is "error loading operating system"

hope that helps.

 

i was playing around with the hard drive partions, i dleted one to try and increase the size of another. i made sure there were no OS files in that partion but it must have deleted something.

 

Oh dear...using Partition Magic I assume? Got to be careful with that, with powerful tools comes great responsibility. Has the computer got a floppy drive?

 

Ah. Sounds like you simply deleted your partition then.

Do you have a recovery disk from Sony? That might work.
Otherwise you could have a look on download.com for a partition editor to un-delete your partition and hopefully recover it...

[edit]Damn... Super beat me to it [/edit]

 

probably messed up your master boot record or MBR. Try booting to a win98 startup disk and type the command fdisk /mbr worked for me when I did that with linux last year... that or you will need to use xp recovery console.

 

It could be that the partition you deleted was the active partition whee the windows bootloader was installed.

Try downloading a bootdisk with fdisk on it (Heres one: http://www.mbhs.edu/~jaosborn/boot98se.exe). Open fdisk and set your windows partition as active. Then, exit fdisk and type 'fdisk /mbr'. That should re-install the bootloader.

Although I'm not 100% sure if that works with windowx 2000/XP, but it should.

Edit: Beaten.

 

ok im going to look for his restore cd. lets hope i find it ...

 

Can also do it from windows 2k/XP (if you're using that OS) recovery console.
Boot to the console, and type "fixboot" and "fixmbr" (there may be spaces after the "fix" part, can never rembember!!)

 

yes its a windows xp system. i think ill have a go at that but will i need a recovery disk to do so ?

 

It's on the setup disks for 2K/XP, it's an option when you start it up.

 

yup once it has loaded all the files you have the option to hit enter to install windows and you can press R for recovery console. Recovery console may ask you for an administrator password though, so hope you remember it or just hit enter if its blank.

do you know which partitions you deleted?

 

the largest of the three (200 gb)

 

Ouch

Try get hold of a linux live cd and you should be able to fix the mbr from there.