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New HD, No boot sector, Can't boot from CD
Hello,
I'm worikng with my Dell xps m1330.
I replaced my old HD (Hitachi 160GB) with a WD 750GB for the space. (the new HD is specifically this one: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive)
I turn on my laptop and the screen says:
"no boot sector on internal hard drive
No bootable devices-- strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility. Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics"
ok...
I reboot my computer hit F12 and try to boot from CD since I have a Windows 7 disc in my CD drive.
It goes straight to the "no boot sector on internal hard drive" screen.
I looked all over for some help but could not find someone who could not boot from CD.
Any help would be great.
Thanks!!!:emotion-1:
osprey4
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April 16th, 2012 16:00
There's one way to test your drive, which is to make a bootable flash drive with the Dell diagnostics on it.
Or you could load Windows from a flash drive. There are plenty of guides on how to do this.
Apart from that, I'm kind of short on ideas.
osprey4
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April 15th, 2012 16:00
Hi gl6000,
Hit F12 as the system is booting, then you can choose to boot from the CD drive.
gl6000
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April 15th, 2012 23:00
Hi,
Thanks for the response.
I have tried that and after trying to boot from the CD drive it goes straight to the "no boot sector on internal hard drive" screen.
???
osprey4
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April 16th, 2012 05:00
Ok, let's try something else. Boot to the BIOS and find the section on boot devices. It may list the hard drive, DVD drive, and/or a USB drive. What you need to do is have the DVD drive as the first boot device. For now, disable the hard drive. Exit saving changes. Now your laptop will try to read the boot sector on your Win 7 disc. If it fails, you might get an error or the old "F1 to continue, F2 for system setup" message. Just keep hitting F1 which will make it try to read your Windows disc again and again. Eventually, it should work.
gl6000
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April 16th, 2012 10:00
I followed the steps and it still did not work.
However it sounds like the DVD is not spinning in the drive which seems curious to me???
gl6000
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April 18th, 2012 11:00
Thanks for all the help.
Booting from a USB key did the trick .
I used this site:
www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide
osprey4
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April 18th, 2012 18:00
Good to hear. Does the DVD drive work now that the OS is loaded?