Hi, I'm new to this forum, I have a big problem with my laptop. I have Windows XP Pro, and my roommate noticed that my computer had been acting very strange and I turned it on after work and it did not load Windows. I can't remember what the message was.. but I tried to re-install XP because I figured he'd messed it up, but it took a day and a half for it to get 8% done reformatting. So thinking it was frozen, I tried to restart it which was probably not smart... Then it comes up with Error: no hard disk detected. I have a friend who told me how to fix this, I can't remember what he said but I know I can boot the computer from a CD or USB, he said to find some recovery program or something...? Basically how do I get the drive back, or how can I get in so i can partition it again and reload XP. Thanks.
Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations Chriss Miller on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
no hard disk detected
- Thread starter jonrk
- Start date
First things first, are you booting up the system and then receiving a message that no bootable drive is found or are you receiving a message that no operating system is loaded?
1. Put your "Operating System" CD into the drive and boot from this. You should receive the prompt to boot from CD, if you do not then reboot the system and press "F12", this should give you a boot menu. Choose your CD ROM drive. Then you should see the "Boot from CD" prompt.
If that fails, then continue on.
2. When booting the system press the key to enter setup (I believe it's F2 on Dell Laptops).
3. This will take you to the BIOS. You don't want to play around much, if at all in here. Depending on your BIOS version will depend on how the interface looks. If you're a standard Dell, you should see a listing of all the different options. Find the one that is for the Hard Drives or IDE Devices. Open that up and verify that a hard drive (seperate from your CD ROM) is listed. If it is not, you should have the ability to autodetect the hard disk (Utilize the "1." slot for the autodetect). This should find your hard drive.
4. Exit the BIOS and save changes. If your hard drive is listed, just exit the BIOS and do not save changes.
5. Retry step 1 again.
1. Put your "Operating System" CD into the drive and boot from this. You should receive the prompt to boot from CD, if you do not then reboot the system and press "F12", this should give you a boot menu. Choose your CD ROM drive. Then you should see the "Boot from CD" prompt.
If that fails, then continue on.
2. When booting the system press the key to enter setup (I believe it's F2 on Dell Laptops).
3. This will take you to the BIOS. You don't want to play around much, if at all in here. Depending on your BIOS version will depend on how the interface looks. If you're a standard Dell, you should see a listing of all the different options. Find the one that is for the Hard Drives or IDE Devices. Open that up and verify that a hard drive (seperate from your CD ROM) is listed. If it is not, you should have the ability to autodetect the hard disk (Utilize the "1." slot for the autodetect). This should find your hard drive.
4. Exit the BIOS and save changes. If your hard drive is listed, just exit the BIOS and do not save changes.
5. Retry step 1 again.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Question
- Locked
- Question
