trouble installing 7 after a HDD crash...

[Cha0]

CF,

Im having a hell of a time here. I have an HP laptop that came stock with vista. a few months ago I was going to throw a hitachi travelstar 500GB HDD in it so I used XXclone to make a bootable clone. I got side tracked and never installed it. Well yesterday I go to boot the machine and all I get is a flashing cursor after it posts. After trying a few things the last thing I did was run the HDD test in BIOS. It starts at 00% and before it ever moves, after about 15 seconds of scanning it tells me to replace the HDD. At this point i can care less. there was literally 10GB left on the drive so I opted to get the hitachi working.

Before doing anything I took out the HDD and threw it in an external case. I was able to navigate through it and see all my documents (like the 8 hours of homework I had to do for class tomorrow) and all my pictured. They were all still in tack so I was happy. I grabbed all the important stuff just to make sure I was covered.

So I grabbed the hitachi, threw it in and after it posts it says "NTLDR is missing, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart. I specifically remember going through the process in XXclone to make it bootable. Now its got me thinking.

My boss gave me 2 extra keys for windows 7 ultimate. We ended up selling 2 machines he had planned on putting them in so he just gave them to me to "hold on to" and told me if I wanted to use one on one of my personal machines I could. I figured now was the time to take him up on it.

So I set the boot order to boot from DVD. Put the disk in and reboot. Nothing happens. All I get is the blank cursor (actually its an underscore). After trying a bunch of random stuff I pull the HDD out. It posts, restarts, posts, restarts, posts then finally boots into the windows DVD. As soon as I see it loading the windows files I throw the HDD back in.

So I get to the prompt, it asks me to accept that MS will own my soul, I say yes, go into fresh install (custom Install) then it asks me to pick which HDD to install on. I cant get ANY hdd drive to show up. I put the hitachi in, the stock one in, and old apple branded one in, nothing will show up. I refresh multiple times but it keeps saying there are no hdds installed.

I tried formating a drive to NTFS and still no luck. I opened disk mngr on another laptop with the HDD in an external case and there are no errors. Clean partitions with nothing on it.

What am I missing. Why is this HP giving me so many problems install MS? any help would be great. Thanks.

 

[Dngrsone]

It kind of sounds like the BIOS isn't recognizing the drives...

Even though SATA is supposed to be hot-swappable, it doesn't mean that your BIOS is designed to handle hot-swapping.

 

[Cha0]

It kind of sounds like the BIOS isn't recognizing the drives...

Even though SATA is supposed to be hot-swappable, it doesn't mean that your BIOS is designed to handle hot-swapping.

For shits n grins I reset all BIOS setting to stock. Still no luck. Any idea on what else to try BIOS wise. After 2 days I'm about out of ideas.

 

[Dngrsone]

Well, make sure that the BIOS is recognizing the drive correctly... you might try setting the drive parameters manually.

 

[Cha0]

ok so i updated the bios and got some diagnostic software. PC check and MRI (geek squads software) wont even see either of my HDDs. either one I put it, the 120gb or the 500gb, the software wont see it.

Im really stumped now. about ready to take it outside and let out some anger.

 

[Chipeater]

What model HP laptop computer do you have? We may be able to help if we can look up the operator's manual and see the BIOS setting choices.

 

[Cha0]

What model HP laptop computer do you have? We may be able to help if we can look up the operator's manual and see the BIOS setting choices.

DV6700, thanks so much.

Ps, bios was just flashed to .33

 

[Chipeater]

OK, you may have tried this already but in case you haven't; with one of the hard drives installed in the notebook, start the computer and press f10 to get to the BIOS. I realize you probably know how to do this, I'm just trying to be thorough. In the BIOS, under the Diagnostics menu can you perform a hard disk self test?

 

[Cha0]

OK, you may have tried this already but in case you haven't; with one of the hard drives installed in the notebook, start the computer and press f10 to get to the BIOS. I realize you probably know how to do this, I'm just trying to be thorough. In the BIOS, under the Diagnostics menu can you perform a hard disk self test?

CF,

trying a few things the last thing I did was run the HDD test in BIOS. It starts at 00% and before it ever moves, after about 15 seconds of scanning it tells me to replace the HDD.

tried this chip. thanks for the idea. whats getting me is that out of no where, none of the diagnostic tools are recognizing a disk. They all say that no disk can be found. Yet when I plug each of the HDDs im trying into an external enclosure they are find. So I think that narrows out the possibility of there being a problem with the HDDs.