No Operating System Found

[lovebug]

So here is my situation. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 which was operating windows 7 quite nicely until Microsoft did the forced upgrade to Windows 10 and corrupted my hard drive. A technician at Microsoft had to wipe the hard drive clean from the dreaded blue screen of death so there is currently no o/s on my computer. I am unable to read the sticker with the windows 7 product key information so I was forced to order the factory recovery installation discs which have the windows operating system embedded in them to re-install windows and have also purchased a new hard drive. The problem is that when I go to boot the cd's into the drive the hard drive, cd drive and pci lan all say "no operating system found". I have been through the bios setup boot list and all the steps that should get the discs to start but nothing. I am not sure if I need to format the new hard drive but my understanding was that the discs would do that for me. This should be an easy fix with the discs to avoid spending money for someone to install another retail copy of windows onto my system but I am not making any progress with this on my own. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[patio]

Microsoft wiped your HDD ? ?

I let that one go...to boot to the CD in BIOS set CD Rom to 1st in boot order...press F10 to save changes and exit....
It should then re-boot to the install CD.

[lovebug]

Yes a technician at a Microsoft store wiped it clean. They tried to re-install windows 7 but they needed the product key. Then they tried to try to install windows 10 again but my hard drive was struggling...so in the end they wiped everything off the system and said it was best to replace my hard drive or buy a new computer...of course they offered me a discount on one of theirs. So I walked out with no o/s and little did I know how challenging it would be to get it up and running again. Must be a clean install.
Thanks but I have tried what you suggested with the boot order but still no go unfortunately. CD and Hard Drive are set up at top of boot priority list.

[patio]

CD/DVD should be 1st.
And it's inexcusable for them to let you walk out without fixing it...
I hope you didn't pay them...

[lovebug]

No I didn't pay them, their further destruction of my computer was complimentary

After troubleshooting over the phone with Microsoft they sent me into one of their retail
locations to get a tech to look at it. I could only leave my computer there for the day so
in all fairness to them they had limited time to look at it...however the tech was clearly
not sure how to fix it and simply made it look like they were trying to do something constructive
to save my computer. Would still be gladly running my windows 7 if they hadn't forced this
upgrade.

I am pretty sure that I have CD at the top of list but I will check again. Thanks

[lovebug]

So I confirmed the boot priority list order and this is what comes up when I go to boot
the recovery CDS

Cannot boot from any device

1) Atapi CD0 - no valid operating system
2) Ata HDD0 - no valid operating system

I am at a loss at what to do next. Confirmed that the new hard drive was connected okay.
Am I missing something?

[patio]

It could be the optical drive's fault...are you sure the CD is bootable ? ?

You can test it on another PC without running setup just to see if it works...

[lovebug]

Sorry a beginner here...not sure how to check if cd is bootable. I did try on another computer when I started troubleshooting this awhile back but not sure how to verify that is bootable...nothing popped up on screen when I put into drive...should something come up on the screen to prompt you to the next step? Thanks

[patio]

Yes...if the CD is bootable...and CD drive is set to 1st in boot order it should skip everything and boot directly to the CD...
What exactly does it say on this CD they sent you ? ?

[lovebug]

One more thing...when I start the computer there is a message that says

Media test failure, check cable.

Not sure if this is relevant to getting the discs to boot.

[patio]

It is...check all connections to the drives MBoard.
Also if it's a desktop you may need a new CMOS battery...Part # CR2032...available anywhere.
Remove all power to replace it.
If you know anyone who knows/builds PC's in your area you may wanna ask for an assist...
Good Luck.

[lovebug]

Still working on this.

Do you have to take the laptop completely apart to check drive connections to the motherboard?

If so I think that I may have to take to a computer repair person...perhaps I have reached my limitations on what I can do myself.

[BC_Programmer]

"Media test failure, check cable." is from an attempt to boot from the network. Obviously since you aren't trying to do that it fails to do so. Most systems are configured such that they will attempt to boot from the network failing all other options.

It sounds like the Disc(s) you have are possibly not bootable, for whatever reason. If there are multiple then you would insert the first one, I presume. They might be ridiculous enough to instead require you to run them from within an OS to setup a recovery partition, which would of course be useless here.

[lovebug]

I think that they are useless for the purpose here due to the fact that I have a new hard drive...of course both Lenovo and Microsoft recommended that I purchase them even after explaining my scenario..

Looks like the only solution is to do a clean install with a new copy of windows 7..not happy I spent $39 plus tax and shipping on these. Maybe I will do some research on alternative operating systems like Linux...

Thanks to everyone for their help...

[Geek-9pm]

I suppose you have another computer, otherwise you could not post here.

Do this in Google:
find computer club near me

It should show a map of places near you where computer users meet together.