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Hard Drive not detected

by Rakil
(Philippines)

i have a problem on my lap-top, whenever i'm setuping a windows XP SP2 it could not be continued because hard disk can't be detected in my lap-top, so kindly advise me what will i do.

Thanks,

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Hard Drive not detected

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Apr 12, 2009
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Hard Drive
by: Support

Hello Rakil,

Question - can you hear the hard drive spin up when you power up the computer?

No - the hard drive has failed - See this page:

 Upgrade SSD Installation

Yes then follw the steps below -

The XP installation disk may not detect the drive for various reasons -

It has failed
It is a SATA interface drive
The motherboard interface has failed.

If you do not know the type of drive you have in your computer you can go to the manufactures web site and find the specifications for the laptop.

If the drive is a SATA drive and your install cd will not detect it then you will need to have the drivers for the SATA drive. (XP did not have SATA drivers on the CD, and I believe that is the case until SP 3). You will need to get the drivers and put them on a floppy or a external drive to access them when you are installing XP, or get XP with SP 3.

If the drive is an IDE drive try this -

Power down the computer, remove the laptop battery. Following the manufactures instructions remove the hard drive and then reinstall it. (Some times the drive needs to be 'reseated').

Power up the computer and go in to the BIOS, does the computer detect the hard drive?

If it does then try installing XP again.

If it doesn't detect the hard drive try another hard drive, if the computer detects the hard drive then the orginal hard drive has failed.

If the computer doesn't detect the other hard drive then the motherboard interface has failed.

Which is cheaper - a new computer or motherboard replacement?

Hope this helps...

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