On boot up my computer tells me it cannot find my harddisk and to boot from "A" drive (no disk). any answers ?

Question

I have check all cables, the Auto in BIOS, Reformating, Reinstalling, Repairing etc nothing I have tried works, any help will be gratefully received, Thnak you
Dennis B

Answer 1

Make sure there isn't a 3.5" floppy in the 3.5" floppy drive. Double check your master and slave settings are right. Hook your HD onto 1 IDE cable setting it to Master and unhook all other internal drives.

Answer 2

- if you can, the first thing i would check is if the hard disk is physically working, put it in someone else's computer and give it a try, if that fails, get a new one and if you need the data take it to a data recovery shop.

- trying a different hard drive in your computer would work basically the same.

-the same error message can sometimes come up if the drive is working but it doens't have a bootup sequence (some bioses only) try booting from a boot floppy, if it works, try to access the hard disk, if it works then parhaps try a disk repatir utility..

- the hard disk may have bad sectors at the beginning of the drive. in that case it might not be usable by most comptuers to boot from.

- the disk may have a boot virus that is telling you that for no reason.

- the boot sequence in the bios may not be using the type of hard disk you are using (IDE/SCSI could be wrongly selected)

-some operating systems won't replace your master boot record when installing and formatting, in that case try running "fdisk -mbr" which will replace it if that's the problem.

well hope you get it booting =)

Answer 3

basically dennis,when your p.c initially starts up,bios(basic input output system)takes control of the computer and sorts out which bit of hardware is responsible for each part of the computer(these options can be changed in set up(press delete))and once everything is ok then bios passes control of the computer to the operating system,in your case windows xp i presume
once windows takes over then the part of windows known as the boot ini. starts,this is a part of windows that runs every time you use windows,it loads the files and programs needed to use windows and other programs such as anti-virus,graphic drivers ect
if the boot ini. is missing or corrupted then windows wont be able to load and will issue a message"cant find hard disk" or more often"boot disk failure..insert system disk"
however all your p.c,s symptoms point towards a hard drive failure,but if you managed to reinstall windows then this cant be true
first try replacing the cmos battery,their only about £2 and once the battery starts to fail,all mad messages start to appear,some which are not as bad as they sound
also check the jumper plugs on your drive,and even if you have checked the cables,just replace them,they are about £3 each,they are not very strong and can easily split and break
good luck mate!

Answer 4

You need to check the BIOS usually F2 or DEL it should show upon boot which key to press. Make sure in the BIOS that the primary hard drive controller is enabled. You already mentioned you checked the cables and such so if all of that is in order I would venture to say that the hard drive died on you and you would then need to replace that drive. Not much else one can do about that. Good luck...

Answer 5

Have you change or mess around with your bios setting? If so you have to check again because if the computer cannot find your hard disk, it's because your bios does not detect it. Only this time you have to be sure that your hard disk is detected by your bios. You should be able to tell the type of hard disk, capacity, head, sector, cylinder etc..You also need to check the mode type which is normally LBA. Changing the mode type can have the same outcome. e.g. if it originally set at normal mode than changing to LBA can cause your hard disk cannot be found . So try to change the mode to see if it can solve your problem.

Answer 6

If it was previously working alright and now is giving you that error without having changed anything, chances are that your hard drive has failed. Look at your bios settings and see if it detects the hard drive. However, detecting it does not prove that it works where not detecting it probably shows that it is dead.

An older computer with a hard drive failure is rarely worth repairing but a newer one is worth it.

Answer 7

The only thing left is to put it in another computer as a slave or in an external hard drive case and see if it can be read. Obviously you may want to get data off of it so find someone with another computer.

Ask them to download something like Testdisk to see if that rescue your data.

Answer 8

If you can hear the disk spinning and still no joy, then you may have a failed disk. In which case, hopefully you have a back up of your data. Last ditch attempt is to try it on another PC, on the outside chance that your PC's drive controller is faulty.

Answer 9

check your bios settings. They should be set to boot from your hard disk - usually 'C'
When you tun on your computer check which 'f' key you need to press t0o get into those settings. If you're not sure get someone who knows

Answer 10

Does the Hard drive seem to be getting any power? can you hear it working? Did you do anything to the computer before?