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DST says no hard drive detected, everything else finds it fine, drive passes all other diagnostics, what the heck?
I have an Studio XPS desktop that won't boot into Windows, startup repair doesn't work, System Restore fails. I have run Dell diagnostics on the system and it's really strange. When i do the Pre-boot System Assessment the Hard Drive DST says Warning - Hard Drive - No Hard Drive Detected. It doesn't give me any error code, just says there is no drive there. Then it tells me no problems have been found with this system so far and do I want to run the remaning tests. If I continue to the full tests the drive is not only found but it passes all diagnostics. However, in the full diagnostics I get a USB error, 5E00:021F USB_DEVICE - is not responding.
I ran Seatools on the drive as well, it found the drive fine (it's a WD drive), says SMART is not tripped, and passes it in both long and short tests.
I have tried reseating the drive cables and the symptoms remain. I am fine with reinstalling Windows if that's what needs to be done to get the system up and running again, but I don't want to take the time to do that if there is a deeper fundamental issue, like with the motherboard or something. I've been able to see the drive fine in the Windows Recovery environment, ran a chkdsk /r and no problems were found. Anybody have any suggestions?
DELL-Rajath N
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June 17th, 2013 12:00
Hi jrmarto,
I suggest you to check if the hard drive is detected in the BIOS by tapping the F2 key at the Dell logo. The drive may contain bad sectors that can cause these errors. Seatools will not provide the correct status of a WD drive. You may have to replace the hard drive to fix the issue.
Please let me know the exact model number of the Studio XPS Desktop (Studio XPS 9100), so that I can check the details and provide further information.
jrmarto
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June 17th, 2013 14:00
The system is a Studio XPS 8000. I've found Seatools to be more reliable that WD diagnostics, but the drive passes WD diagnostics (and Dell drive diagnostics) as well. I went into the BIOS - the main system information page only shows the service tag and model, processor and ram information. The CMOS page shows sata1 as "hard disk", nothing more than that. The drive is properly named and listed on the Boot Device Configuration page.
The system is in a boot loop - the stop error, if it helps in any way, is 0x0000007b (0xfffff8800009a9928, 0xffffffffc000000d, 0x00000000000, 0x000000000)
osprey4
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June 17th, 2013 16:00
Hi jrmarto,
Please boot to the BIOS and find the SATA mode. Change it to ATA.
jrmarto
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June 17th, 2013 17:00
It was at ATA, based on some other web postings I tried changing it to RAID. No improvement, even after another session of startup repair and another chkdsk /r, so I changed it back to ATA
jrmarto
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June 18th, 2013 16:00
You can't do a repair installation of Windows 7 if you can't start Windows 7, a really odd decision by Microsoft but one that is pretty much set in stone. So i decided to back up the system and reinstall from scratch. I first tried doing a factory restore - that didn't work, it said it completed sucessfully but when the system restarted it continued to be in the reboot loop I was experiencing prior to the restore. So I took my Windows 7 disk and reinstalled it in the OS partition, leaving the restore and diagnostics partitions intact. Everything went fine, the system is up and running and hasn't had any crashes or issues as I have been reinstalling drivers, software, and Windows updates. However, out of curiousity I went back into Dell diagnostics. The preboot assessement DST is unchanged - it still says I have no hard disk installed. The long diagnostics still find the drive and say it has no issues. So, my system is up and running again but I still want to know - what the heck?
osprey4
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June 18th, 2013 16:00
Since you have the Windows disc, try performing a repair installation of the OS.
osprey4
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June 19th, 2013 17:00
Ok, good to hear.
jshendell
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July 15th, 2014 08:00
Hi there:
I have had exact problem, but when I tried to re-install the win7 system, it shows only 3.9GB space available on the patition and no other partition available. so can't re-install the system at all. any ideas?
osprey4
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July 15th, 2014 17:00
Hi Jshendell,
You should delete all existing partitions on the hard drive prior to installing Windows 7. If you only see a single partition with 3.9 GB of space, then it's possible your hard drive is bad. You can run the Dell diagnostics from your Dell drivers and utilities disc to confirm.
jshendell
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July 16th, 2014 08:00
Hi Ospre4:
I have done the test and it did not test hard drive . the sign beside the hard drive is NA which is not availabe. so I think you are right that the hd might be bad already. I will order a new hd and see what will happen. thank you very much for you reply.
osprey4
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July 16th, 2014 16:00
Glad to help. Good luck with the new drive.