no operating system found

My mother gave me a Sony Vaio PCG-FX370 laptop computer that wouldn't
boot. Her friend had bought the computer and apparently it had come
that way from the manufacturer or it went bad shortly after they had
it. The error message was something like "No operating system found".
They had replaced the hard drive a couple of times but it still didn't
work. They ended up getting a new one from somewhere else and gave the
computer to my mother to see if she could fix it. She gave me the
computer since she couldn't fix it.

After taking it apart and playing with the guts a bit I suspected the
adapter cable between the hard drive and the motherboard. Eventually
after enough wiggling the connector became unattached from the ribbon
cable. Buying a new one was around $50 so there was no way I was going
to spend that money. I took it to work and managed to solder the edges
to the connector and the remaining pins are attached by press fitting.
It seems to me this is the way it was in the first place.

After reconnecting, the laptop booted up normally with XP preinstalled
by the manufacturer. Everything is working nicely and all updates have
been installed. Although I would like more RAM than the 256MB it came
with, I will use it for a while to see if I can live with it as is.

There certainly was some satisfaction in troubleshooting and fixing an
internal problem within a laptop computer. At the least we are an owner
of a computer we could certainly use in a growing family with no cost
involved.

On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:41:17 -0400, bmt thoughtfully wrote:

> My mother gave me a Sony Vaio PCG-FX370 laptop computer that wouldn't
> boot. Her friend had bought the computer and apparently it had come that
> way from the manufacturer or it went bad shortly after they had it. The
> error message was something like "No operating system found". They had
> replaced the hard drive a couple of times but it still didn't work. They
> ended up getting a new one from somewhere else and gave the computer to my
> mother to see if she could fix it. She gave me the computer since she
> couldn't fix it.
>
> After taking it apart and playing with the guts a bit I suspected the
> adapter cable between the hard drive and the motherboard. Eventually
> after enough wiggling the connector became unattached from the ribbon
> cable. Buying a new one was around $50 so there was no way I was going to
> spend that money. I took it to work and managed to solder the edges to
> the connector and the remaining pins are attached by press fitting. It
> seems to me this is the way it was in the first place.
>
> After reconnecting, the laptop booted up normally with XP preinstalled by
> the manufacturer. Everything is working nicely and all updates have been
> installed. Although I would like more RAM than the 256MB it came with, I
> will use it for a while to see if I can live with it as is.
>
> There certainly was some satisfaction in troubleshooting and fixing an
> internal problem within a laptop computer. At the least we are an owner of
> a computer we could certainly use in a growing family with no cost
> involved.

Congratulations. Thanks for the troubleshooting tip. Amazing the
original owners didn't RMA the laptop back to Sony. Sony quality has
suffered since the early 90's.