Inspiron 8100 not recognizing new HDD

Question

A few months ago my Inspiron 8100 started giving me the Blue Screen with 'unmountable boot volume' I contacted Dell and they walked me through a few things before determining that I needed a new Hard Drive. Well I purchased a Samsung 80GB drive. After I installed it and turned on the computer and I go to the Setup menu, the menu freezes and I cannot do anything. I have tried booting from the dvd drive to install windows and it says there are no bootable volumes. But when I put the old HD back in goes through the XP load screen then back to the blue screen as before. If the old HD is in I can go to the setup menu and it doesn't freeze and I can change values. Any help would be greatlly appreciated.

ltj340 · Answer

I did that upon the original installation.

ejn63 · Answer

Do you have the latest system BIOS?

ejn63 · Answer

Look at the back of the new drive and you'll probably see bare pins. You need to pull the blade adapter off the original drive and place it over the pins on the new one - otherwise it's not connected to the system.

ltj340 · Answer

Thank you very much!! I installed the newest BIOS and it started working righy away. Now the touch pad and the 'eraser mouse' will not work any tips there?

Bay Wolf · Answer

You will need to install the drivers for your system.

They need to be installed in a certain order. Here are the instructions on which order to install.

To find and download the drivers for your system, scroll down the page on left side an click on
"Drivers and Downloads". Then enter your Service Tag or model number of your computer.
Select your operating system and then download the drivers that you need .

Storage, Drives & Media

Inspiron 8100 not recognizing new HDD

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