no boot device available sata 0: installed sata 1: installed sata 2: none sata 3: none

anyone?!

I was not booting from the disk, so I can see that I wouldn't get anywhere.  The disk is not formatted.  I assume I need to load Vista on it and then format it.

However, based on what I did, which is simply put a new hard drive in and turned on the computer, why am I getting the same message as when I try to boot with my old hard drive?  In other words, I realize I should've booted from the CD, but since I didn't is this message supposed to come up?

No boot device available:

sata 0: installed

sata 1: installed

sata 2: none

sata 3: none

thanks.

Are you sure you're booting from the Vista installation disk? Put the Vista disk in the optical drive and close the drawer. Reboot and quickly press F12. Choose the option to boot from the optical drive .

Did you format the new hard drive?

Ron

Thank you for this reply.

As far as my current hard drive goes, do you think it is the culprit?  I'd hate to do all this work with the new hard drive and end up with the same error at start up.

thanks again.

Yes, that's exactly the message you should get with any new hard drive.

It has no format, no boot sector, absolutely nothing on it to allow the system to recognize it as a bootable drive.  It's like you're putting a blank sheet of paper in a scanner and expecting the scanner to see text on the page. :emotion-4:

Here's Dell's tutorial for manually reinstalling Vista. Read and follow it carefully.

Ron

Dunno for sure. It's possible the drive has damage in the boot sector, or you could have a corrupted file or maybe even a boot sector virus.

Run chkdsk on the hard drive to see if there are bad sectors or corrupted files:

Click Start >RUN

Type in: chkdsk c: /f /r

Click OK

Accept the offer to run chkdsk at next boot and then reboot. It'll run before Vista loads.  It may take a long time to run so have patience! Don't interrupt it in the middle or you might lose some data.

See if that fixes the problem. But if the drive is developing bad sectors, it may fail unexpectedly so be sure to do routine/frequent backups of your data onto an external media. I suppose you could install that  new drive as a secondary (non-boot) drive in this system and back up files your on that drive. (You will have to format it as "NTFS" file system before you can use it.)

Ron

Either way it sounds that I should replace the drive.  I already bought the new drive and backed up all the important files to another computer.  I will install a new drive then.

What should be the sequence of steps?  Do I install the new drive and then run Vista from a CD?  Or there is stuff to do prior to that?  I'm somewhat confused when to partition, when to format the drive.

Thank you again.

I suggest you download all the latest versions of the drivers needed for the hardware in your system from support.dell.com, first. You can do this on any PC and burn them onto a CD. You can probably find the right collection of drivers by using your service tag number rather than the model number at the Dell support page. And makes sure to select the correct version of Windows to get the right drivers, too.

Drivers have to be installed in the correct order, so you may want to rename them to something more meaningful than "R123456.exe" when you download them.  Use the "Browser" download option rather than Dell's Download Manager which is buggy. Make sure you look for Desktop System Software (System Utilities, not required for all systems) and Chipset driver.

When you have the drivers ready, make sure the new hard drive is recognized in BIOS setup before you begin the Vista install (reboot and press F2 to open BIOS setup).

That's all you should need to do in advance. Then boot from the Vista CD and look near the beginning of the installation routine for an option to format the hard drive (choose "NTFS" format).  I don't believe Vista installation software offers the option to partition the hard drive. Formatting the drive means it's divided up into sectors (sort of like putting post-it notes in specific places in a book).

Partitioning the drive means it's divided up so that Windows sees multiple -smaller- drives. C: is your  boot hard drive with all the Windows files. C: can be the entire physical drive or it can be just a partition on the drive, and other partitions ("drives") become D:, E:, F:, etc depending on how you partition it. There's no need to partition the drive unless you want to create separate "drives" for Windows and software (C:) and a "drive" where your data is stored (D:). If you really want to partition the drive, you can always do that afterwards with software like Partition Magic.

After Vista is installed, install the drivers in correct order:

Desktop System Software (if required for this model)

Chipset driver

Video driver

Audio driver

Network driver

Other drivers...

When that's all done and the system is booting correctly, get your firewall and antiviral software running. Then go directly to the Microsoft update site and download all the updates and fixes for Vista (eg, SP1 etc), updates for Internet Explorer, Office etc, etc. And finally reinstall all your applications.

WHEW!

Ron

superb answer!

thank you for taking the time, really.

as far as the drivers go, I have the CD that cam with the computer which has all the drivers and utilities.  anything wrong with using this disk post Vista install?  I'm really not looking forward to looking for drivers on their website, copying, etc.

even if this disk is slightly outdated, it is the original disk.

would it be ok to use it?

thanks.

You can use the drivers CD that came with the system, but some of those drivers may be out of date, and there may be important updates and fixes in later versions.

And keep in the mind that the CD will contain every possible driver for every combination of hardware that could have been installed in this model PC. You won't need all of them for your system, so you have to know exactly what's installed (eg, video card, audio, etc.) so you only install the right drivers. 

If you use your service tag number at the Dell site, it's supposed to show you only the drivers you actually need (unless, of course, you changed some hardware after it was shipped from the factory).

 Good luck with the installation!

Ron

I realize this is an old convo but I am getting the same message as soon as I turn on my computer.  However I've not recently changed anything and am pretty clueless!  Ron- could you tell me what to do in untech language?  Thanks.

@New User Name-

Start your own, new thread and include the PC model and version of Windows. Without that info, nobody can help you.

Ok.  I did.  Thanks.