no operating system found !

I have a Compaq presario 1700 T notebook evrytime i start it up it says no operating system. i had went into BIO'S SET IT TO DEFAULT AND TRY USING THE RECOVERY DISK SAME THING IT WAS A NO GO. TRY TO USE OtHER RESTORE DISK still says no operating system, this lap top has interchangeable cd-rom and A drive which really stink can use only one at a time. i try booting up with a: bott disk and it will assing letter but it assign letter c: as a virutal drive ? dont understand so can someone please help me than k you..
P.S. mouse pad don't work when booting up with starup disk it say there is a ps mouse which is not true there no mouse with this, i had brought a usb mouse which dont work either because it has to be install in windows

I had this happen with my Compaq laptop too. After trying to boot up countless times I gave the machine a rest for 24 hours and the problem had gone away.

My thought when it was causing me problems was that something had gotten loose or the BIOS became corrupted.

If you are still under support from Compaq/HP, would give them a call.

Doc

I doubt if you can get into the Recovery Console with one of those recovery CD's, but if you know anybody who can lend you a proper Windows XP CD (Home or Pro, it doesn't matter), boot up with the CD in the drive, go to the Recovery Console, and at the command prompt type "fixboot" without the quotes, then "fixmbr" then "bootcfg /rebuild". There won't be any licencing issues just using a CD to get to the Recovery Console.