You had installed Linux and now you want to go back to Windows Vista / XP / 2000. But all you get is an “Error Loading Operating System” after the first part of the Windows installer has finished transferring files? Here’s how to fix this error:
Solution 1:
Go to the BIOS settings of your computer. Change the translation method used to access the hard drive from the default setting “Auto” to “Large” (not LBA, not CHS!). Reboot and with some luck installation will pick up at the point where it aborted before. If it doesn’t continue with the second part of the installation, you have to start over and do a fresh install. Leave the BIOS setting at “Large” for that task!
Note: There really *are* cases where you *have* to do a fresh install after changing the BIOS setting to “Large”. However, it doesn’t hurt to first try whether XP will finish the previous install ;-) Now the only thing I would really like to know is: Why is it, that just Microsoft’s operating systems seem to have this problem? Every Linux distribution I installed on the very same machine didn’t have any problems whatsoever with the “Auto” setting. And to be fair: nor has Windows 98 ;-) And I really wonder why it is so hard for Microsoft to post the actual fix on their support pages instead of the blah that’s written there.
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Thank you sir, this really saved my day.
I need help!! Really bad, I have no idea on how to deal with this problem, I also do not want to lose my files, because I have work on there that’s really valuable to me. Well, I have an ASUS P5S800-VM. Please help me!
I was racking out my brains trying to get my new 250 gig Seagate HD to boot up a fresh install of Win XP on my trusty old MSI K7N2-LSR motherboard (Nforce2 chipset). I got the dreaded error loading operating system message. So I Googled and found this great web-page… Reading the suggestions, I changed the bios from auto-detecting the HD to setting it at Large — well I didn’t hold my breath, thinking it wouldn’t work, but, wow, it worked!!!! A billion thank-you’s!!!
I can’t believe this worked, I had used this hard drive before without issue, and without manually setting the hard drive type, but setting the drive type to Large instead of its auto detected CHS got windows to finish installing. I did have to do a reinstall after changing it, but that was no biggie. Thanks heaps :)
yo man thanks for this post, saved me from going insane, not all bios are same, just look for it.
I have a hp pav. a735w
my cpu says error loading operatiing system and i dont know how to get to my bios…..
also i can not start windows xp…
what do i do… please reply and thank you for reading this!
akakomen101@hotmail.com
It was the cable for me. I installed XP on a new 160GB PATA Seagate Drive in an old AMD 1.1Ghz Duron. Initially I used the old cable and got this error. Changing the access mode to large did not resolve the problem but changing the cable did. Note both cables looked identical however the old one was rated 300v while the new one was rated 150v… Hope this helps. BTW if the owner of this blog needs help with hosting feel free to contact Uncensored-Hosting.com via sales@uncensored-hosting.com tell Dwayne sent you and they will hook you with FREE hosting up! I’d hate to see a valuable resource like this blog go away. Thanks!
Hi
Yesterday I turned on my pc and got the ‘error loading operating system’ message on a black screen. I didn’t alter my pc in anyway prior to this. It just happened. I have tried pressing Del / F1 / F2 to get to the BIOS screen and only managed to do this (from the guidance of another website) by removing a small silver battery on my motherboard (CR2032 Newsun 3V). So I got to the Bios screen and changed the only option I had: LBA/Large:
Auto/Disabled. It was Auto before so I disabled it, but it didnt work. I cant even access the Bios page at all anymore. I cant understand why this is happening, I worked and squeezed my nuts off to buy this pc, its going to be a total nightmare to save for a new one. Can anyone help. I am a noob with pc’s so you may need to help me a bit with this.
My PC is made of (pre built by a different company):
*480w power supply
*Mushkin 2048MB Dual Kit 240-pin PC5300 DDR2 Twin-Pack (2x 1024mb sticks), 5-5-5-15
*MS Windows XP, always updated – cant remember if a disk was supplied with it when I bought it, cant find one anyway
*Asus P5B LGA775 P965 P4/C2D board, 4x DDR2, PCI-E x16, 3x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI, 4x SATA, GigaLAN, Audio w/SPDIF
*320Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 7200RPM SATA-II hard disk, 16mb cache
*MSI GF 7900GTO 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI-Express Video card, Dual DVI
*Intel Core2 Duo E6600 2.40Ghz (Conroe 1066mhz) Processor, Dual core LGA775 4mb cache, w/Intel Cooler
*No floppy drive, just a DVD reader/writer
MacAfee Anti Virus – always updated
Spysweeper, CCleaner, AVG and lots of other spyware / virus killers.
I dont have any partitions on my hard drive and i had used about half of it.
Can some please please help?
@Dwayne: Tnx for the offer, but currently I’m fine with regards to hosting services ;)
@mandev: Since you didn’t change your system prior to getting this dreaded message, chance are your hard drive’s master boor record (MBR) failed. There’s a chance you can restore the MBR by using the “fixmbr / fixboot” commands as outlined in the comments above.
Thanks Stefan, i dont think i had an installation disk for XP, as my pc was pre-built. I will see if i can buy a new copy of XP and see whether i can access the recovery console with that.
Found my xp installation disk, got into bios, changed start up first thingy to dvd rom, loaded windows recovery console, used fixmbr and then fixboot (twice for good measure), changed the LBA/Large thing from Disabled to Auto…….and it worked. Also did a checkdisk which took hours.
Since this happened in the first place, does this mean that my hard drive is dying? Should i get a new one?
Thanks for your help Stefan
Well, there are three major causes for a corrupted MBR:
1) Hard drive is failing/dying
2) Some application went crazy and trashed the MBR by writing data to it
3) A malicious programm tried to install some sort of virus/worm/trojan to the MBR
Choose your poison ;) If you’re quite sure it wasn’t some sort of malware causing the problem I’d suggest to check the website of your hard drive’s manufacturer. There you should be able to find some sort of hard drive testing utility which will provide at least a clue about whether your drive is about to fail or not.
Hello,
I want to provide my experience about “error loading operating sysytem”. I had it twice.
The first time I did not find solution except this – I added the new HDD for windows booting and left old one as second HDD.
The second time I met problem with 40 Gbt Samsung HDD.
Luckily it had Jumper for 32 Gbt capasity limitation.
I set it and….the problem has gone.
Good luck…!!!
thank you very much for this faq that you have made. It has helped me a lot in formatting a Seagate HDD. Keep up the good Work and God bless…
Please help me Stefan.
I just picked up a Dell Dimension 8300 and after booting it up, I recieved the “error loading operating system” error. I cannot find where to change the bios from auto to large. Any help is kindly appreciated.
Deniz
Hi there!
I’m running Windows Vista but I REALLY like to have windows XP on my second partition.
When I try to install I get the same error after I restart my computer.
In my BIOS I see only 2 settings: “AUTO” and “LBA”, so no “LARGE” mode!!
Do you know a solution?
(I agree to format my Vista partition if necessary)
Please help :)
My config:
HDD: SAMSUNG HD321KJ (320gb)
mobo: ASUS P5K DELUXE WIFI-AP
Hi, im having the same problem as Asgaro except i just want to install windows xp only, and i go into my bios and there is only one or the other to choose from it says LBA/Large or disable, i cant just select large. If i just try to disable it i cant even get to the install screen of windows xp. I had windows vista on the machine before, but my dad being old fashioned and having alot of old programs wanted xp back so i reformatted and tryed a fresh install of windows xp but got the, Error Loading Operating System. Any help would be greatly appreciated Thankyou
Did you guys read the section titled “Update III”? That’s all I can think of to solve your problem. But there’s always the chance that you simply don’t have the option to manually set the access mode. In that case, try to find a smaller hard drive and use that one as the boot drive and make the second one a pure data drive.
O.k., here’s my scenario;
I own an eMachine W2040 running Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002, Service Pack 2. I also own a Dell OptiPlex GX150 case ( originally running Windows 98SE), the hard drive was removed/destroyed. I took my hard drives out of my eMachine and put them in to the Dell case. I got everything going alright but the system gave me the “error loading operating system” error. I ended up putting the drives back into the eMachine case and fired it up, everything was as it was before. I did my research and got plenty of documentation, just as reassurance. So I did it again…moved my drives to the Dell case, ran 14 hours worth of diagnostics, all tests passed, still couldn’t get it to work. Fine ok I put the drives back in to the eMachine case and now I’m getting the error about the operating system loading… It won’t let me anywhere, I get a black svreen and that error message, there’s no way for me to get into system setup or anything… what did I do ???!!! I have many of important things on that drive I need….how am I sposta back it up ???!!! I don’t want to re-install Windows becasue it’ll erase my drive’s contents. I also don’t want to spend a ton of money on software for restoration purposes.
From what you wrote I’d say that one of the diagnostic tools you were using did something to the drives which in turn causes them to no longer being properly recognized by the eMachine.
If you’re lucky, it’s just bad cabling while swapping the drives back in (been there, done that). The “second best” possibility is that one of the diagnostic tools wrote a new master boot record (MBR) to the drives. In that case you should be able to recover your drives using the Recovery Console from your Windows XP CD. Detailled instructions on how to use that can be found on Microsoft’s TechNet.
If the diagnostics also altered the partition tables of your drives, repair isn’t that easy and you’d need some more sophisitcated tools. And lastly, if one of the diagnostics did do a so called “destructive test” (which means overwriting the drives with random data to ensure that the data can be read as it was written) your data is most likely gone.
If you’ve got access to yet another machine I’d suggest putting the drives in there *as additional drives*. In other words: Let that machine boot from it’s normal drive and see whether your old drive’s data shows up as additional drive letters. If that works, you should back up the data before doing anything else.
For the actual recovery I’d try the Recovery Console approach first. If that doesn’t work, you might want to search the internet for “Hiren’s Boot CD” and try some of the tools provided there. However, some of them are potentially dangerous and may cause data loss if not used properly.
I have been following this post, and I have a clearer answer to what might problem might be, but still have an error message or two.
Prior to this problem, I was unable to get on line. After several attempts, I took my desktop to Best Buy/Geek Squad, who were able to get me on their intranet, cleaned a few files, and finally was able to get online. They also attempted to get Windows SP2, but because of several viruses, it did not load, so they had to uninstall it–I was still able to gte online.
Brought it home, loaded virus software to remove viruses, etc.–nice clean machine. Went to start it up a few days ago, get error message:
“error loading operating system” (“googled” the error, found this blog); Only a few folks here have my system:
Windows XP Pro
American Megatrends M848A on an AMIBIOS HiFlex ver 1.54SIS
AMD Athlon 2400+
IDE0: Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80GB)
IDE1: WDC WD 200BB-00JHA0
CD/DVD: Hitachi GD 7500
Floppy A not working anyway
Tried to repeat actions noted here, but unable to find “IDE HDD AUTO SETUP”. But I did find “Standard CMOS Setup”; “Advanced CMOS Setup”; and, “Auto-Detect Hard Disks” (which is the same as “standard”) on the BIOS screen. The only section having an LBA in it was the Standard Setup, for Pri and Sec Master/Slave. Choices were User/Auto/CD-DVD/ARMD/Not Installed, plus a range of numbers (1-46) for hard drives I presume.
For either “User”, or the range of numbers, under LBA, I could only choose “On/Off”–not large or auto.
I tried several iterations of user/auto, optimum, fail-safe, settings,whatever, still no joy, same error message.
Besides all of the above, I also cannot enter “Safe Mode” by hitting “F8.” All I get doing that is a dialog box listing the boot hardware. I figured if I loaded in SAFE mode, I could transfer needed files to my laptop.
Also could not load from either my OS system disk (copy), nor my SpinRite (v.6) CD.
If anyone has an answer. it would be most appreciated!!
Thanks in advance–since I might be the last poster here in 2007, I will go ahead and wish everyone a successful NEW YEAR!!!
Bob
“Go to the BIOS settings of your machine and change the translation method used to access the hard drive from the default setting “Auto” to “Large” (not LBA, not CHS!).”
THANK YOU It worked I was getting desperate but thanks for the above tip all is OK now.
Happy New 2008
What is a noob? I’m sure I am one, technically challenged. I am getting “the message” when doing a system restore on my sony Pcv-w510g.I don’t know anything about the BIOS stuff. I cant get anything to come up at all. Just text about diskette drive B. I had already paid for an online service, plum choice, but now they want 200. dollars for an onsite visit. any help?
after 4 days of struggle and googleing (including reading these posts) i made my pc work! at first i did get the “error loading..” message, changed the acces mode to LARGE (many thanx Stefan) from LBA, than my pc got stuck on the “verifying DMI pool..” error. i must say that i have a Gigabyte GA-7N400S Mobo and i “inherited” a WD 250GB IDE HDD. my solution: put the CD/DVD on the same IDE cable with the HDD. i reinstalled XP sp2 and now it’s fine.
Thanks… Thanks… Thanks….
It’s really work….
Thanks again ;)
Hi, I have a Gigabyte GA-6OXE with BIOS version F7b. I used a “Ghost” type of program called SelfImage to copy the image of my 15 GB Maxtor 91531U3 hard drive to my 80 GB Western Digital WD800 hard drive. The copy appeared to complete successfully. I can even see the files on the 80 GB Western Digital drive when I have it hooked up as a slave drive while booted into Windows on the 15 GB Maxtor drive. However, when I boot to the 80 GB Western Digital drive, I get the “Error loading operation system” message. I did go into BIOS and change the Access Mode to Large. But I still get this message. Any ideas?
Also, I also tried FIXMBR and FIXBOOT with no luck.
Thanks!
Did you check that the partition you’re trying to boot from is marked as “active”?
Thanks for the response. Yes, I have confirmed that the partition is indeed marked active. I used fdisk to confirm this. Any other thoughts? Thanks for your help!
Sorry, nothing else I can come up with right now except for a broken tool or some other error in the cloning process. Was the original drive formatted using NTFS or was it FAT?
Both drives are NTFS. I don’t know much about the master boot record, but could it be that the MBR was not copied over (from the 15 GB HD) when I imaged the 80 GB HD? Or would that have produced a different error?
It’s entirely possible that the MBR wasn’t copied over by the SelfImage tool but that should have been taken care of by the FIXMBR utility.
The “Error Loading Operating System” is just that: the boot loader can’t find any OS to actually load. But there’s a lot of reasons *why* it can’t load the OS. First, it may not find anything to load at the place it’s looking for somnething to load. That’s what my tip fixes. Second, it may find something but in case what it finds is corrupted, the same error message will be shown. Lastly, there’s always the possibility of no MBR present, no bootable device found, and, and, and … That’s what makes it quite difficult to diagnose a particular problem without sitting in front of the machine.
I understand. I am just going to do a fresh install on the 80 GB drive. Thank you for your time in any case :)
This is strange, I just ran the Windows XP Professional installation disc, deleted all partitions, then did the quick format option for NTFS, then after the first reboot, it again stopped on “Error loading operating system”. Any suggestions?
Thanks for the advice! Fixed my problem.
I was getting this error and Googled it. That brought me to your site which pointed me at the BIOS. I went in, looked, and saw that it was set to CHS. I set it to AUTO and everything went smoothly from that point forward. Thanks!
I ve recently bought an Asus P5KC motherboard with Q6600 dual core cpu. My HDD is a 250 gb Seagate with NCQ.(16 mb cache)
I can’t setup XP – Harddisk is selectable as normal during setup. (234 gb) It copies files – I don’t know where???!! But after the first ordinary reboot it says: error loading operating system.
On my setup there is no LBA option like LARGE- There is Auto and Disabled only.
??
Can you help
Hi I can’t find the auto/large option! I have an Asus P4P800. I am a computer retard so I really need your help! I read through all these responses and I can barely understand any of this.
Thanks!
Hello Stefan. In the great words of the comic book store clerk on The Simpsons, “There is no emoticon for what I’m feeling!”.
But today is your lucky day as there certainly is an emoticon in the form of a :). Followed by a :D
Thank you for turning a 4 week tale of running around in circles, pulling my hair out trying to figure out what was going on into a simple BIOS trick.
Greetings Stefan. Solution II did it for me. I inadvertantly switched to a different cable during my diagnosis of another problem and then started getting the “Error Loading Operating System” message. After switching back to my original HD ribbon cable that error went away. Thanks for the tip it saved me from initiating far more desperate measures.
Thanks man. Im a tech at a fairly large computer company and i have only come across this problem once. all i did was swap out the hard disk. But I also got this problem on my home machine. *Fixed Now* (Thanks Dude) but it is weired because all i did was format the disk and reinstall xp then this problem came up. I didnt even touch the BIOS and I am using the same hard disk. Ah well all good now.
I have a problem on my notebook. Last month, I used a program named data recovery to recover some files, but accidentally, I deleted an important files in my harddisk. when I reboot my notebook, the “error loading operating system” message came up. First I thought that the system on my windows is corrupted,so i tried to reinstal it but i couldn’t because the internal harddisk isn’t detected. Plese help me for this problem…
If the internal harddisk isn’t detected by BIOS and you see an “Error Loading Operating System” that just means that your hard drive died. No cure available.
I have a problem, I put new (empty) HDD, Maxtor, to my my computer, and started the installation of WinXP. After a restart it displayed an “Error loading operating system” error. After I put Pri Master mode to LBA, it’s the same, and if I put to Large, system stops on reading CD-Rom (it reads it, and then nothing…)
HDD: Maxtor 40gb
MBR: Biostar m6vbe
BIOS: Award Modular 4.51
CPU: Pentium II, 400Mhz
when I enter to BIOS, there is an information about my hard disk type. Is this mean that my hard disk is detected??And if i change the internal hard disk can it be cured?thanx Stefan for your comments.
@Slavko:
Make sure that you really set the type for the hard drive, not for the CD ROM drive. Also you should try to put the CD ROM drive and the hard drive on different cables. Also remember that after changing the access mode you may need to format the drive again.
@Harta:
What kind of information is displayed? If it’s just Auto, then this mean nothing. I’ve also seen cases where the drive was detected (read: the manufacturer and model) but the cylinders/heads/sectors were displayed as “0″ (zero) which means that the drive is broken. If you put in a new drive that should work but obviously all data from the old drive will be lost.
Hi, Stefan, when I enter to bios, ther is an information about my hard-disk’s type. Does it mean that my internal hard-drive died? If I change my internal hard-drive,can I get my notebook at usual condition?
Thanx Stefan for your comments
Hi Stefan how if I take out the hard drive and I use it as external hard drive. Can it work??
You’d have to find an external case that will accept notebook drives. If you can get one, that would be at least a way to test whether the drive is still ok or not.
Hi!!!
I have tried to install Windows XP on partition on which has been installed Linux Fedora 8. Setup has formated partition after that shows everybody here known message “error loading OS”. I read all (allmost) problems on this page but no solution. My BIOS on the main page has few options, there is option “LBA/Large” but pressing enter I get only two options “Auto” and “Disabled”. So i can’t change much stuff. Can you please help me, you are my only hope, I can’t sleep at nights becouse this stypid error message.
I have Asus P5KC Motherboard (not updated BIOS), HDD SATA II WD 500GB, C2D 2,66GHz, Asus EN8800GT…
Please HEEEELP!!!