How do I work out what is wrong with a laptop?

Magic_x_uk

Magic_x_uk

Magic_x_uk

Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2005
Posts
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Location
Derbyshire
Hi, got a laptop (xp) that wont boot windows.

Just keeps attempting to start windows xp but then coming up with a blue screen and some numbers, but flicks of so quick I don't have time to read it. This is in normal or safe mode.

Tried to reinstall windows XP with a disc in the laptop but then it keeps popping up with something along the lines of 'cant find hard drive'

Any ideas of what to try next?

I do not have any means of being able to plug the HD from the laptop into anything else/ caddy etc to check it unfortunately.
 
Can I do the following.

Take Laptop HD out and pop into my pc, or are the sata connectors different on a laptop HD compared to a normal 3.5" HD?

Not sure on this one.

I really need to buy a caddy or something suitable for reading laptop HD's

error code is
*** STOP: 0x00000024 (0x00190444, 0x849DCD88, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000)
 
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faulty HDD or faulty HDD ribbon cable [if your laptop has one] try and boot from an external source such as cd or USB and see if that works. Or you can remove the HDD, plug in into a caddy and run hd tune on another computer

edit:yes you can plug it into your pc
 
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well i think the HD is detected in the BIOS, it is NOT anywhere in BOOT options. Just running a HD self test, which is in the BIOS, see what that throws up.

Just did not know if I could physically put a 2.5inch laptop HD in a 3.5inch HD sata caddy, Didnt know if the connectors were the same or different?




Thing is I have a XP Disc, I popped that it and tried 'R' for repair and also tried a new install, just came up with a message along the lines of 'cannot find hard drive/no hard drive installed'


OKAY, ran the 70min BIOS HD test, no errors came up, tried to reboot and again nothing.

Most odd.

I wouldnt care if it would just allow me to re install XP, but just keeps saying cannot find hard drive
 
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I fancy boys said:
faulty HDD or faulty HDD ribbon cable [if your laptop has one] try and boot from an external source such as cd or USB and see if that works. Or you can remove the HDD, plug in into a caddy and run hd tune on another computer

edit:yes you can plug it into your pc
Click to expand...

What can I try as in booting from CD or a USB stick to check?

Like i said, when i tried to install XP from a CD, it came up ' cant find HD'
 
i think i may need to load sata drivers during win xp installation.
BUT i cannot as
A) no floppy drive on this laptop and
B) it wont allow me to choose where the drivers are.

It just expects them to be on a floppy.

What is a work around for this?




Thinking of trying LINUX LIVE CD.

see if that works either on a CD or USB, can anyone point to the right place as there seems to be lots of versions. Want to try and get data off of HD first.

thanks
 
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popped it out and connected to into a usb caddy, the HD from the laptop (seagate 120GB SATA) started actually BEEPING, i have never heard a HD do that before.

Anyhow, disconnected and connected it a few times and it finally showed up on 'my computer' as a drive, but when I clicked it nothing, a few times it said 'you need to format this drive' I tried that and it did actually allow me to format it.

So HD is formatted...But how can I install XP on that laptop as it asks me for SCSI drivers from a floppy and of course laptop now dont have floppy drives?

Sod it. Tried to install windows 7 on it. Worked perfectly (well so far)

Laptop working fine now. Or at least certainly seems so.

getting from windows 7 a battery warning, which because laptop some 3 years old. Can understand.

but windows 7 seems to be working fine.
 
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To install xp etc you do not need any sata or other drivers first, just install the o/s as per norm,ignore where your asked about sata drivers. Pleased you got it working. Maybe the drive boot sector was corrupt, it might be worth getting cheap spare drive in case yours is dying
 
Chili. If you read what I put. I could NOT install XP as it kept saying 'cannot find Hard Drive'

yet when I did a install with Win 7, it installed fine.

Cannot understand why it wouldn't allow an XP install though.
 
I had a similar problem with my desktop and it was down to the achi setting in the bios, i had to turn it off.......it was achi or something very similar spelling to that, i cannot check for you as i have no computers at the moment. Doinvthis from my mobile
 
i would honestly run hd tune though to see if that hard drive is ok. It honestly sounds faulty. What would have happened is the bad sectors would have been hidden from windows yet this will not stop more bad sectors appearing in th future.
 
The SATA mode is probably set to AHCI in the BIOS. A vanilla XP disk doesn't have the drivers to recognise that type of disk controller as SATA was launched a year or so after XP shipped...
 
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