No Fixed disks present

Question

hi there

I'm trying to fdisk and then rebuild a pc which started throwing up "Operating system not found" errors when booting. booted pc from a floppy and tried to run fdisk but got the message "no fixed disks present". web has suggested that this might be a hardware error. I thought to confirm this I would swap that HDD with another. have done the swap physically but when I boot I get nothing except a cursor, not even a command prompt when it should be loading the OS. It's a dell pc but the swapped in HDD is a compaq spare. Would this be a problem? Do I need to set it up further? Or maybe there are other errors going on. Any advice appreciated. Thank you.

betty_cann · Answer

Thanks for the speedy response.  Have just tried booting from NT installation disk and it started set up, then came up with an error message saying that it couldn't find the hard drive.   This pc is 4 years old.  what do you think I should suggest to the owner?

osprey4 · Answer

I wouldn't use a drive from a Compaq, which will contain a separate system setup partition that might confuse things.

Rather, you should be able to boot with your Windows disc, provided you set your system to boot from the CD-ROM. If your system is not detecting the hard drive, check the BIOS to see if it's recognized properly.

betty_cann · Answer

Actually the other pretty dumb thing is that I don't know how to get into the bios.  when starting up it doesn't give instructions like normal and I've hammered all the f keys but to no avail.  any ideas?

camron · Answer

xps t600 is the system that hes trying to go into the system setup and it uses DEL key

camron · Answer

To go into system setup on that system, pres the DEL key, but it really is a hardware failure, swapping it with another HDD is a good idea as long as its both standard IDE and should not cause a problem in terms of determining if the HDD or controller for the HDD is bad. try to swap cables as well, try to put it as well to the secondary controller, and check if would get detected in system setup under drive configuration inside advanced menu

betty_cann · Answer

and I'm working with NT on a dell dimension xps t600.  thanks

Storage, Drives & Media

No Fixed disks present

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