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| Thread ID: 69991 | 2006-06-18 19:36:00 | Windows won't recognize hard drive | Boomba (10580) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 464221 | 2006-06-18 19:36:00 | I have a semi-new Alienware laptop that I plan on giving to a friend. It is well out of it's warranty period. I wanted to re-install Windows on it, to wipe the drive clean so that he would have a fresh install. I popped the Windows XP disk that came with the computer in, and restarted the computer. I got through the installation process up until I had to choose where to install windows when I got this screen: img.photobucket.com For whatever reason, no hard drives were detected successfully. I hit "Enter" to install anyway, and got this screen: img.photobucket.com I tried hitting any combonation of keys, restarting each time, to no avail. I remembered having a similar problem on another computer, which I solved by installing a Linux distro, then installing Windows after that. After installing Linux, and trying to install Windows again, I get the two same messages. I'm totally lost, I've spend hours and hours looking into this problem, and found no solid answers. Thanks in advance! |
Boomba (10580) | ||
| 464222 | 2006-06-18 19:48:00 | some more info on the afore mentioned laptop would be handy...but it looks pretty typical of a machine that needs the sata drivers installed when windows setup loads...you would find those on your system disk somewherer I would expect | straitjacket (9698) | ||
| 464223 | 2006-06-18 21:17:00 | It is a Area-51M 7700 P4 3.0Ghz 800FSB NVidia 6800 FXGO Hitachi Notebook 60GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive 1GB Samsung PC4200 |
Boomba (10580) | ||
| 464224 | 2006-06-19 00:13:00 | Have you tried to see in the BIOS if the hard disk is detected? Linux installs on the hard drive? If so may be you might need to reboot to dos with a windows 98 startup disk or cd to try the "fdisk /mbr" linux uses a different filesystem to windows. | kennie (10559) | ||
| 464225 | 2006-06-19 00:16:00 | hi there. Maybe your IDE system needs press F6 befroe you install xp. Try to find some driver in labtop website which can put in a floopy disk that for IDE driver. That is my guess. wish helps. | xeclipse (10561) | ||
| 464226 | 2006-06-19 00:45:00 | Have you tried to see in the BIOS if the hard disk is detected? Linux installs on the hard drive? If so may be you might need to reboot to dos with a windows 98 startup disk or cd to try the "fdisk /mbr" linux uses a different filesystem to windows. I got the same messages before and after linux, so I don't think it has anything to do with the MBR. hi there. Maybe your IDE system needs press F6 befroe you install xp. Try to find some driver in labtop website which can put in a floopy disk that for IDE driver. That is my guess. wish helps. I tried an assortment of drivers. I'm 99% positive it's SATA, and I tried all the different drivers available on their website, but none worked. I contacted Alienware, but I have yet to get a response. |
Boomba (10580) | ||
| 464227 | 2006-06-19 01:16:00 | Did you check in the bios to see if the drive was detected or not and made sure (if there is) the setting for sata drives is enabled? Check the hard disk cabling as well making sure the cables have not come loose or out of place. If you have the drivers that came with the laptop then the sata drivers should be on that disk. |
kennie (10559) | ||
| 464228 | 2006-06-19 03:23:00 | Everything is enabled, and the BIOS sees the hard drive. The thing that really confuses me is, there were no probelms before, and Linux sees the drive... | Boomba (10580) | ||
| 464229 | 2006-06-19 07:52:00 | Dont know if you've tried these but this is the link to alienware for the Promise ata drivers for the 7700 ftp://aliendl.alienware.com/Mobile/7700/7700_NonRAID_1.00.0.29.zip I dont know if you had raid or not but here's the link for the raid driver too ftp://aliendl.alienware.com/Mobile/7700/7700_RAID_1.00.1.37.zip remember to extract to floopy and press F6 to specify additional raid/scsi drviers as windows setup loads....hopefully it helps coz if it dont then things might get expensive :eek: |
straitjacket (9698) | ||
| 464230 | 2006-06-19 16:25:00 | straitjacket!! Thank you so much, those were the drivers I was looking for but couldn't find. Nice digging skills. Setup is starting as I type, and things look good so far. Alas, I must go to work, so I hope it works! Thanks a bunch! |
Boomba (10580) | ||
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