PC Bios detect hard disk??

[Rod25]

Hi Guys,
How can I verify that my pc's bios can detect hard disk? I have gone into Bios but cannot find this out?

Thanks in advance,
Rod

 

[alidabiri]

somewhere in the bios it will list your hard drive(s), cd rom drive(s) and your floppy.if you don't see it in the bios, maybe it's not hooked up properly. here's the detail.
you probably have 2 ide slots. one is primary, and the second one, secondary.
each one can have a master hdd and a slave hdd. the jumbers on each drive, designates the status (jumber can be set to master or slave). the master drive is hooked to the end of the cable, the slave drive is hooked to the middle of the cable. you can have 2 hard drives on a cable (master and slave). or you can have a hard drive and a cd rom. etc.
check the jumber settings on the new drive and see if it matches the cable hooking, and the power is hooked up properly. check the bios. post back.

 

[Rod25]

Hi alidabiri,
Thank you for your reply. This is for a fujtsu siemens laptop. I am not familiar with PC Bios but when I enter F2 and get into the BIOS I have the following:

primary Master which set to NONE. When I select ENTER I get type set to AUTO.

Under secondary master I have CD-ROM. I will also check cables.

Thanks again,
Rod

 

[electronicsfreak]

Rod25 , set all of them to AUTO , save settings and leave bios.

 

[Rod25]

Hi electronicsfreak,

They are set to auto but no luck...

Thanks for you reply,
Rod

 

[electronicsfreak]

Have you adjusted the jumpers any ? have you added anything? As hard drive should be set to master, anything else on the same ide cable should be slave.

Secondary cable is optional which you set to master and slave although if any hard drives are on it I higly reccomend setting them to master first.

 

[Rod25]

Hi electronicsfreak,

This is my laptop and I have made no physical changes. I just wanted to verify that my laptop bios detects hard disk but I cannot see anything that states that it can see that a certain hard disk is installed. Next step will be to use Windows XP Recovery console...I think....

Thanks,

Rod

 

[electronicsfreak]

Windows xp disc will not affect how bios detects. Windows has no control over the bios. If its not detecting it try a bios update if ones available.

 

[alidabiri]

the laptop comes with eveything configured correctly. are you adding another hard drive?
are you trying to detect the hard drive that's already there?

 

[Rod25]

Hi alidabiri,
I am trying to detect the hard disk that is already there. It cannot find operating system. I think my hard disk is finished. Is there anyway of knowing this for sure? Is there a way of recovery info of the hard disk?

Thanks,
Rod

 

[satrow]

Try removing then refitting the HD, Rod - it's been known to work.

It may be possible to recover data using a laptop drive to IDE convertor on a desktop.

You say "It cannot find operating system", what error msg do you get?

 

[alidabiri]

i think you are looking at the wrong thing or chasing the wrong thing. the message you are agetting is that It can't find the operating system. I'm thinking that it has already hit the hard disk, but can't find operating system. there might be a problem with mbr (master boot record). do this:
get a win98 floppy boot disk from

http://www.bootdisk.com

start the comptuer with that floppy disk
see if you can browse the hard drive and copy your files. after that, you can re-install operating system

 

[Rod25]

Hi Guys,
When I power up laptop I get 'CANNOT FIND OPERATING SYSTEM'. It is an XP and I have no floppy drive? I'm sorry but I am not PC literate. Can I get a bootup disk for xp on cd-rom?

Thanks again,
rod

 

[electronicsfreak]

I believe you can make one here.

http://www.bootdisk.com/

They have floppys but I believe they have iso as well.

 

[satrow]

Rod, you say you have no floppy drive; in that case, you need to boot from the XP CD and choose the recovery console option. Fixmbr and/or fixboot will be the first commands to try.

If that doesn't work, try booting from the CD and choose the Repair option.

 

[Rod25]

Hi satrow,
Thanks for your reply...
I have tried that but it tells me that a hard disk is not available...

Thanks,
Rod

 

[satrow]

You've tried removing and refitting the drive?

I think your next move should be to pull the HD and try to access it on a desktop system Rod.

 

[XofCDe3rd]

Okay just a thought here Rod

from what you have posted
1) you can not see any indication of a hard disk in bios setup

This may have been our first indication of the problem because, I have seen laptops which have been built to only autodetect a Hard Disk and this can not be changed

2) you have not physically opened up the laptop

see reason one

3) You have Typed in CAPs the error which you have seen

An all CAPS error about a missing operating systems usually indicates on most computers that the hard disk is not detected or there is no active partition on the hard disk( I have not encountered the latter situation in laptops up to date).

My 2toea is you may have a Hard disk problem. You can try and recover by removing your hard disk and placing it in a laptop drive caddy and connecting to your PC.

 

[yinsr]

Hi Rod,

Have you resolved your hard drive issue. I have the same problem too. I tried to replace my desktop hard drive with the new one and computer was not able to find hard drive with different jumper slection. I tried to put my old one back and did not work. I checked all connections which were OK. Please let me know if you resolved your hard drive issue.

Thanks a lot.

yinsr