Hard Drive Failure?

[dnelms]

I've lost the use of my hard drive on my Dimension 8400. During a shutdown, the power flipped off. When I tried to boot back up I got the following message:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:"
\Windows\System32\Config\System

Notice there is not a c: preceding the message. I have done the following.
1. Put XP Professional Install CD in to try the recovery console. Once started it could not find a hard drive.
2. Ran XP setup and it could not find a hard drive.
3. Check BIOS settings. It does find the hard drive on SATA 0, reports the brand and SN of the drive.
4. Ran Dell diagnostic CD, all works fine. Hard drive passed all tests.
5. Tried booting with a floppy disk. Once it started, it will not see any c: drive.
6. Tried unseating and reseating all connections to the motherboard and hard drive

Any ideas where to turn next? It appears the drive and the data is intact on the hard drive, it just can't be seen. What am I missing to do. As it stands now, even if I wanted to do a reformat (really would like to avoid as last backup was a month ago), I can't because the computer will not recognize I have a hard drive

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

David

 

[ASG0856]

Was it running as a Raid Drive, if so have you tried re-installing the raid controller driver?

 

[dnelms]

No it was not running as a RAID drive.

 

[Freestone]

Even though you are not using RAID, you need to feed XP the SATA drivers, as ASG0856 alluded to.

thread779-972802 refers to these. Using your Service Tag, you should be able to download the necessary drivers from the Dell website.