I just installed Debian sarge on my friends computer and when I try too boot I just get "Operating system not found".

What could cause this? This is a rather old PC(i386) from Gateway, 700mhz.
Is the GRUB Loader maybe not starting? Where is the GRUB loader installed anyway, is it installed on the motherboard? Could the BIOS of the mother board be interfering or something? Maybe i set up the jumpers wrong?rhrh

I would really like to get this to work.. but I have no idea why I'm getting "Operating system not found" instead of the GRUB Loader, hoping someone here could point me in the right direction. :/

I'm running Knoppix on the same computer right now to send this message btw.

Either the BIOS doesn't see the HDD (unlikely, since you installed on it) or the HDD isn't flagged bootable (likely)

"Where is the GRUB loader installed anyway, is it installed on the motherboard? "

Any loader is installed on the Master Boot Record which is the first block on the hard drive.

"Is the GRUB Loader maybe not starting?"

All of the messages that you get are BIOS messages until the BIOS loads the MBR. The program on the MBR is the first software to run and all messages after the MBR is loaded are software messages, in this case GRUB messages.

"I just installed Debian sarge on my friends computer and when I try too boot I just get "Operating system not found".

What could cause this?"

The BIOS is looking through the devices it has in its list of bootable devices and not finding a bootloader on the first block on any of these devices. Possibly the BIOS list of bootable devices is wrong. Possibly you have not successfully installed the GRUB boot loader on the hard drive as you intended.

I think that if the second possibility were true then you would get an error message from whatever boot loader was there before GRUB. So maybe the "Operating system not found" message is from some old boot loader that can no longer find the old operating system when it is loaded.

While I was typing all this in sigsegv managed to say it all in one sentence.

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Steve Stites

To see if Linux installed properly and to confirm that it's GRUB (and get into Linux to fix GRUB) stick the first install disk into the drive then when you get to the boot prompt type

linux root=/dev/hda2

Change the /dev/hda2 to whatever the partition with root installed is. If Debian installed correctly it should boot up and then you can run GRUB configuration (not sure what the GRUB configuration tool is called I use LiLo) and fix it.