Error loading operating system.

[sk8er]

Hi everybody,
I was loading Win2K on my Gateway 510 XL (P4) and it was going good until I rebooted and it said "Error loading operating system". Help appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[nhasian]

you could try again but if it continues to fail you may have some defective equipment in your computer.

 

[sk8er]

Thanks so much for the reply but I finally got it working I had to fix MBR and that did it!

 

[nessmarie21]

Yes, indeed; fixing MBR does really help if this error is not related to hardware malfunction. Here is an article describing entire boot process in detail:
http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b13/fix-error-loading-operating-system.php
The reason for this particular error is that Master Boot Record tries to load 1st sector from active partition, but sector is either outside device sector count or does not contain 55 AA signature.