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My MS Vista 64 Sony VAIO laptop suddenly gives an error when I try to boot up: Cannot find operating system' or some such wording.

I hear a clicking sound which sounds like it's coming from the dvd drive.

So, I tried booting after OPENING THE CD/DVD DRIVE first - and was able to successfully.

Do I need a new DVD Drive?

Is the main board possibly failing?

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Is there a disk in the drive? – Shinrai Sep 21 '11 at 22:02
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Go to your BIOS settings.. Set your hard drive at a higher priority than your CD/DVD drive in your boot sequence.

Sounds like you have a hardware failure of some kind. Place a higher priority on backups now. If you're having this problem now, you may have deeper problems about to emerge. Though it's possible your optical drive is just screwed up a bit and it won't get worse.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

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Thanks for the information. I'm going to see if I can make the BIOS change. I'm not sure the best way to do a back up if my DVD drive is failing, however. – Brett Sep 21 '11 at 22:27
You could by an external DVD drive (~$50, I think).. Or maybe a flash drive? Another hard drive in an enclosure or dump your stuff on to a network share? There's also web/online storage options, like Amazon EC2. – Doc Sep 21 '11 at 22:33
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