Make sure the boot partition is marked "Active".
You can check it with a boot floppy using fdisk to look at it...
Use a boot floppy for the particular OS installed.
http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml has them... \
Rick Glazier
From: "JJ" <[log in to unmask]>
> Friend's hard drive died. System is a Pavillion 7920. I put a new HD in was
> able to FDISK & format from Recovery CD (Windows ME system). Ran the
> Recovery and it wrote the files to the HD but on boot it says "Missing
> Operating System". So what part of Recovery isn't working and how do you fix
> it?
PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
visit our download web page at:
http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml