help! "error loading operating system"

when I try to boot my t61 (running vista) for the first time after shutdown I get "error loading operating system" but then I turn it off and try again and it boots normally....anybody know what could be wrong?

 

What is the boot order set at in your BIOS? It might be trying to boot to USB, floppy, or CD and not find anything.

 

ya I think that may have been it I changed boot order and it hasn't happened since THANKS!

 

changing boot order didnt work after all, my boot order starts with the hard drive so it should be fine shouldnt it? i still get the message but the strange thing is that the system boots normally after I shutdown and retry

 

Is it an OS specific error or system error?

 

I dont know but before I used factory restore I didnt get the message, should I just factory restore again?

 

You can try that 1st to check if the problem still persists and decide later on a permanent action. Backup your stuff 1st though before doing so.

 

Hi all,

I'm having the exact same problem...

I power on the NB, and it says "error loading operating system". Only key that works is power, so I power it off. Then I power it back on again and it works fine - loads up the OS as usual.

When I shut down after I finish using it, it shuts down like normal. But the next day when I turn it on, the cycle repeats.

Im using a Lenovo T61 with Vista Ultimate. Its been fine for the first week, just started to do this. I'm thinking maybe a windows update did something funky... ?

 

What does Lenovo tech support say?

 

Haven't tried them yet, right now im making sure everything is up to date (bios upgrades/etc) since I'm sure that will be the first question they ask me.

 

Im just wondering, the the OS kick in before the error appears or VISTA did not have a chance to boot all?

 

vista doesnt boot at all, right after the thinkpad screen I get the error

 

Please help, I'm having the same problem.

First there were BSOD(solved) and now this error, I think I bought a lemon.

 

i finally just gave up and did factory restore and the problem seems to be gone

 

platinum, pleaase report back in few days as these things take a while to show up after system update etc., if the problem is really gone for good after that I will do the same.

Thx.

 

This can often mean bad sectors on a hard drive. When you do get it to boot, click Start, then Computer. Right click on your C: drive and then click Properties. Click on the Tools tab and then under Error Checking click Check Now. Check off both boxes and then click Start. When it asks you to schedule a boot time check, click Yes. Then restart your computer. This will allow Windows to scan your hard drive for bad sectors and move off any data if it finds some bad sectors.

 

Hi,

This problem seems vaguely similar to the Windows XP having the 'NTLDR is missing' messages that used to happen on all NT based OS's.

If you know how to use the Recovery Console in Windows, try this:

1) Load the Windows Vista CD into your drive, let the machine boot into your CD-drive.

2) When the text based Welcome screen comes up, press R to go to the Recovery Console.

3) In the recovery console, type in your administrator password that you set when you first booted up the machine when it arrived.

4) On the recovery console, type in fixboot [drive], where [drive] is your system drive. A lot of people who don't have experience in this don't do this well and actually crash their own machine...

Oh yea, if you don't have the Vista CD, I think you better boot into the ThinkVantage utility and backup all your files then reload your machine...

 

Lenovo tech support told me to go to the Hitachi website and download a drive error checking program and check for errors. I ran the basic version and the advanced version, both came up with no errors.

Then they said to do a Restore on it, which I did. Now the problem has gone away. The only thing I have not done yet is redo my Windows Updates. So I'm thinking that maybe a Windows Update caused the error.

I did a backup of my HDD (in the current working state) and soon I'll do one update at a time to find out which one (if any) caused the problem

Aside from this issue, I love my T61!

 

Boot up your computer and interrupt it by clicking on the Thinkvantage button. Do a hardware check of everything. The smbios test was reported as "failed". I'm waiting for a part (laptop sent out for repair).

 

I just ran into the same problem.. Right after doing a system restore from the repair partition.. It was after doing updates to.... are you guys still getting this problem?

 

I haven't done any Windows updates yet, and so far I have not had a repeat of the problem since I did the restore.

I'm planning on buying an external HDD to do a full image backup, then I'll do Windows update one at a time to see if one of those are the ones that caused the problem.

 

I have a Thinkpad T61 running Windows Vista. I experienced this same problem and tried everything to fix it. Even a reinstall of the operating system from the factory partition did not help. Shortly after the reinstall, the problem resurfaced.

I've now found a solution that, at least in my case, completely fixed the problem. I'm guessing this fix would work for a fair number of you who have posted here.

The solution was to apply the Lenovo "Hard drive firmware update" released by Lenovo on 10/2/2007. You can download it here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-63685

(I have the latest version of the Lenovo "System Update" utility installed on my laptop, and for some reason it does not detect a need for this and several other updates and does not offer them as downloads. I don't know why that would be, since according to the web site this hard-drive firmware-update utility is clearly applicable to my system.)

I'd be interested to know if anyone tries this and, like me, finds that it works.

Hoping this message may be of some help to you ....

 

I ran the hard drive firmware update and still the same issue... I'm on a T61.

Also wanted to say that Lenovo tech support are the most useless people on the planet. They told me they get calls about this problem all the time, but their only suggestion is to recover or do a clean install. Too bad neither of those solved my problem either... They also offer fee-based support for $100/hour... Lenovo is horrible.