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Dell Vostro 3560 Hard Drive Cannot Be Detected When Booting Into Windows 8 DVD
I bought a Dell Vostro 3560 laptop 2 days ago, it came with Windows 7 Home Premium, now, I have a Windows 8 DVD and put it into the drive. I booted from the DVD, and somehow, when I select "Custom Install", the setup generates an error message indicating that no hard drive can be found (how does that happen when I can boot into Windows 7 perfectly?). I ended up booting into Windows 7 and ran the setup.exe of the Windows 8 DVD and did an in-place upgrade, but the key question remains:
What am I supposed to do, should this computer fail to boot to its Operating System?
I am asking here because, in the event that this computer's Operating System becomes corrupt, or catches a virus, and needs a reformat, what should I do? In the old days, I used to boot from installation media and format the hard drive, then "clean install" any given OS. Now, since the Windows Setup fails to detect a hard drive, does that mean it is not possible to repair a broken installation of Windows? Also, does that mean that I cannot dual boot another OS?
I am really worried, because I used to be able to fix any software-level error or infection by reformatting and reinstalling OSes, is the driver of the 1TB HDD needed in order for the Setup program to detect the drive? Also, if I were to install a Linux or BSD OS, I think the drivers are not the same? It is for certain beyond my ability to write a driver for any hardware device, at least for the next 5 years...by then, this laptop will no longer be in use...so, experienced users, please, help me solve this "hard drive undetectable" error!!
srikumar1980
2 Posts
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July 19th, 2013 01:00
Hi,
I too am facing the same problem.
Purchased a Vostro 3560 with Windows 7 home premium 2 days back. I have windows 8 pro dvd which I purchased and want to install it.
I tried the upgrading and it went through all the steps correctly and after rebooting it went into BSOD error.
After it was back it went into windows 7 again and the windows 8 setup informed that it could not install windows 8!!
randint
7 Posts
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July 19th, 2013 07:00
Actually, you can do this, download a Linux Live CD like Ubuntu, Fedora or others, copy it to a USB drive or burn to a CD/DVD. Before rebooting, backup all your important files. Then, boot to the Live CD, and do the following:
Open the terminal, type "sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sda && sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sdb" without quotes, and then, hit enter. If it asks you to type Y or something, type Y to confirm.
Reboot your computer into Windows 8 Setup DVD, then, I do not know what you want to do next. You can try to install Windows 8 on the big (regular) hard drive then set up Intel Rapid Storage Technology, or you can just install it on the small (solid state) drive. (I do not know, because I am not even using Windows as my host, I am using Ubuntu 13.04 and Windows XP running inside it by means of a virtual machine).