Action Dan

I am dealing with an older Dell PC that was running ME. ME is trashed on this machine so I did a data recovery for the person and now when I go back re-install ME, I cannot get the installation cd to recognize that the HDD is installed. However, the BIOS sees it just fine as the primary master. I also use Hiren's BootCD 8.0 and none of the system info tools on there can recognize the HDD either.

Any other info or ideas, let me know?

*I am a tech. @ Circuit City and this is a customers computer, I need help asap*


Thanks guys,

--Dan

dai

have you error checked the drive with the manufacturers diognostic utility

Action Dan

If I use any bootable utility, they cannot detect the drive.

dai

recheck the jumper and try another eide cable
does that include booting from floppy or it just does not see them from a cd boot

Action Dan

I double checked that the jumper is set correctly to master. I'll try replacing the ide ribbon real quick. And all of the utilities I have/used are cd-rom bootable, not floppy.

dai

try the diognostic if the cable does not fix it runs from floppy
have you tried a windows disk to check if the disk you are using is the problem

Action Dan

i only have the ME disc provided from the customer, i suppose i could start and XP just to see if it recognizes the HD..

i just replaced the cable and that had no effect... do you know of any bootable floppy diagnostics tools?

ill try starting an xp install to see if it finds the drive, and if that doesnt work from there ill try the floppy diags.

dai

all the h/d manufacturers have the tools in their d/l section
me disks are bootable

Action Dan

The disc is bootable, however, when it comes to the point in setup where it looks for the HD, it says that it cannot continue because no HD was detected.

I only have 1 ME disc as it is, so the only other way I could verify the disc would be to start up and XP install just to see if in the beginning it recognizes a drive.

dai

the drive is formatted?

Action Dan

i just started an xp install and even it cannot continue because it says "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer."

Action Dan

the drive is in the same condition it was when it crashed

does ME have a built-in utility to format and make partitions like XP?

dai

no you have to run fdisk and format c at the prompt,if the system is crashing you always format before reinstalling,with anything before xp
it could have been a problem with the drive causing it to crash in the first place
sometimes zeroing the drive before formatting will fix it and other times you have to replace the drive
if it is the original me drive or earlier,there is a good possiblity it has gone

Action Dan

so i need a bootable floppy with fdisk?

dai

yes you can d/l one from here
http://www.boootdisk.com/
most of us use the win98 one

Action Dan

ok ill give that a try, i just tried the western digital bootable floppy diagnostics, even it cannot find the drive... ill get that boot disk, format it, and try again

Action Dan

ouch, even booting from the 98 floppy, fdisk kicked back a message - "No fixed disks present"

dai

can you put the h/d into another computer to see if it can be accessed and or do you have another h/d you can put in to see if the same problem occurs
as it sounds like the drive

Action Dan

it can be accessed from another machine, thats how i did the data retrieval

dai

try it on the other eide channel