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I have no clue what is going on, I have had this happen on two systems both of which people say that haven't deleted anything on.
On bootup, I get an error message in the top left of my screen "Missing OS" then if I try to reformat the drive or anything, it tells me there is no drive installed. This has happened on a XP home OS and a Win 98 computer. I am completely clueless it shows that there is no HD and I can't format it or partition it or recover or anything please help.
Thanks
I would check the jumpers and see if they are set correctly and make sure all cables and power connectors are seated firmly and another thing to try is get in to the bios and see if the bios detects it. worst case the Hd might be dead :(
This blows...The most difficult part abouth this, is that this isn't my machine, so I am not sure what went on before it crashed. I was able to get into the BIOS and it showed it as if there was nothing there, but the Harddrive is maybe 4 months old. And, it was barely used.
I think I am going to make the failed drive my secondary put a new HD in and then load an OS and see if I can get any info off the secondary (old) drive. That sound good?
You should be able to do that
The drive may be okay, but the IDE controller on the motherboard may be fried.
Try the drive on a different motherboard & see what happens
Steve
make sure you've got the ribbion cable the right way around at both ends, some times the connectors on the cable arent keyed and are easy to get the wrong way around,
also set the bios drive detection to auto, to get you started
also something ive been playing with at the moment, is using knoppix for datarecovery, ive had a few HD that are corrupt or come up with various messages on booting that dont allow me acess to a prompt
so i go to the bios only make the CD-rom drive my bootable drive and disallow all the others, then boot knoppix,
usually the HD can be seen on the desktop and stuff can be recovereed that way,
and then can FDISK them by going to the shell typing "sudo su" and then "cfdisk"
thats if its knakered
one other think to check to make sure the cable is the correct way around it to look how the cable on the CD drive is done and then copy it
make sure no pins are bent if they are make sure the computers turned off and then bent them back with a small screwdriver
i2c
Thanks Guys, I am still trying to get through this. All the connections are good but I am thinking if i cant boot with another HD it will be the Motherboard but I am going to continue fooling around with it, thank you all it has helped me think about other ways to do it.
Thanks
Just a thought, but most motherboards have 2 ide slots, have you tried using the other one? I have had one go bad while the other is still working. Have you tried switching the jumpers around from master to cable select and such? Is the hard drive on it's own ide cable or sharing one with a cd rom? Other then that, I agree you should be able to hook it up as a slave drive and see what you can see...
br_fusion,
You can try going to your hard drive manufacturer's website. There you will surely find an exclusive tool for your hard drive (every hard drive has a tool) with a lot of functions to use, including restore your hard drive to "factory state", erase, format, re-format, partition, etc., etc., etc.
Here's a list of hard drive manufacturer's websites:
HARD DISK TOOLS:
- WESTERN DIGITAL: HERE
- MAXTOR: HERE
- SEAGATE: HERE
- SAMSUNG: HERE
- FUJITSU: HERE
- HITACHI: HERE
- TOSHIBA: HERE
- IBM: HERE (supported now by Hitachi)
- QUANTUM: HERE (supported now by Maxtor)
CONFIGURATIONS:
- OLD HARD DISKS: HERE
Good luck,
DKRR
you forgot to mention IBM they had a big batch of bad hardrives out there that where dieing left and right.Quote:
Originally posted here by thehorse13
If you went into the BIOS and there is nothing there under hard drives then as DeadAddict has said, the drive may be fried and also the power cable or drive cable could have come off the drive. Check your connections before you write off the drive as dead. A four month old drive shouldn't die that quickly (unless it is a Maxtor or Seagate drive ;)) These are about the *only* things that could be wrong here so you wont be stuck troubleshooting for weeks.
Hi, I play a lot with old machines because it is my hobby........... I have come across similar problems with PI/133 boxes and 60-80 Gb hard-drives?..............they run some proggy that intercepts the bios to tell it the true drive size...................could this be your problem?.....the BIOS will say that you have 2 x 8Gb drives, when you know that you just installed 2 x 20Gb.................it's the BIOS?
Just a thought....hope it helps
Johnno
Hi folks,
This is Neo, back with this suggestion.
I suspect the problem with a file called boot.ini. This is a file containing the path of the OSs installed and the choice of OSs (hope u all know this).
Boot the system with a start-up disk. Check the file. Probably lies in System Drive (C:).
adiz,
On July 16, 2003, I had a message that said "A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"
Your problem reminded me my message. I reinstalled everything 'cuz I didn't want the hassles. My computer's working okay now (it's been a little more than a month since that disasterous day).
The problem reoccurred again (I received the same message) about 2 weeks ago; but upon the 3 finger salute, it found the OS...STRANGE????
Anyway, I normally back up data about 1x a month. Within the last month, I already did 2 backups. hahaha
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING TO adiz and I?
Anyway, I sympathize with you my friend (misery loves company) and hope you get some bit and bytes from your computer before resorting through what I went through.
Aloha and Good luck
This is a big coincidence. I just today had the same problem with a users system. is states missing OS. So I remove the drive, let calls it drive A, and plug A into another system with another drive in there,lets all ths one drive B. B already has a working OS on it. The system only recognises drive B and doesnt detect drive A. after rebooting again. the system detects both A & B but hangs at the boot screen of win2k. from what i guess, its a HD controller problem on HD A itself. I could be wrong but how can u use any of the tools if the bios cannot even detect the drive A.
Neo,
That was my inclination to begin with, however, I can't even access the C: drive, it states some BS about there not being a drive. I even tried to reload the OS and it can't find a drive to load onto. So, I am still playing but I can't even format the thing.
Ughhh
YES!!!!!!!
I was able to figure it out... I dual booted with a spare HD (B:) it found the new HD and on the second boot i was ableto gain access to my old one (A:) I always create the windows partition separate from the actual storage so that if I need to I can always reinstall windows. So I was able to get into delpart delete my previous version of windows and load the current one...without losing much information. Thank my sweet jesus. If anyone wants anymore info on this I would be happy to explain it to them.
Thank You all for you help!
Try this, Take the IDE setting in the bios off of Auto Detect (if it's set to auto), and manually input the Heads, Cylinders, etc. You can find that information on the Hard Drive label..... Good Luck.
Yes four things come to mind
Yes some things come to mind
1.a pinched/damaged/or reversed IDE cable
2.BIT ROT
these are strictly thoughts from a assuming mind
This could mean that your hard drive may fail soon. In the control panel>>>Administrative Tools>>>Event Viewer>>>System Log. Check the system logs for unusual Disk errors, IDE errors (provided you are using IDE drive/s. We have seen similar problems with eventual hard drive failures. Keep an eye on you logs...All of them on a regular basis. Update your BIOS.
Good luck
DarkCarniv0l