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Hard drive problem on Studio 540!!!!
Here's the thing, the other day I got on my computer and was opening my email and the internet when my computer froze so I manually shut it down. When I restarted it, it said their was no boot device selected. I have tried to detect the hard drive in the BIOS, but it is not detected, but on the screen that displays "no boot device selected" it says it is their and installed. My computer runs Vista and I can't get past the black screen with "No boot device selected." Has anyone else had this problem? If so what did you do and am I going to lose everything on my hard drive? That is the one major thing I am worried about. Thanks for any help.
RoHe
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June 10th, 2010 18:00
When you run BIOS setup, what does it say about SATA0? That's where your hard drive should be recognized.
If you reboot and press F12 do you get the Boot Device Menu ? Choose your hard drive from there and see what happens. If it won't boot, try again but this time choose your optical drive. NOTE: be sure to put a bootable CD/DVD in the optical drive before choosing it from the boot device menu.
Post back with the results.
Ron
mikeyb19
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June 10th, 2010 21:00
SATA0 says it is "not detected", but if I just let the computer start up then it comes to a black screen that says the following:
No boot device selected
SATA0 Installed (hard drive)
SATA1 Installed (CD/DVD drive)
SATA 2 None
SATA 3 None
SATA 4 None
I can get to the boot device menu but the hard drive doesn't appear there, but the CD drive does and I can boot from the CD drive.
RoHe
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June 11th, 2010 08:00
if BIOS Says SATA0 is not detected, the system isn't seeing the hard drive correctly. Try this:
Power off and unplug PC. Press/hold power button on tower for ~15 sec. Open the case and carefully remove and reseat the data cable to your hard drive at both ends (eg, on the drive and on the motherboard). Reseat the cable from the power supply to the hard drive too. Blow out all the dust bunnies with canned air while you're in there.
Then remove the motherboard battery and press/hold power button again for ~30 sec. Reinstall the battery (right-side-up!) and see if it boots from the hard drive now with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected. Note: If you don't have an internal floppy drive in this system, you might get a floppy drive error when you boot after reinstalling the battery. Just press F1 to ignore that message, and we'll fix that later.
If that doesn't help, boot from your Dell Resouces CD and run the extended hard drive tests, assuming the diagnostics can see the drive...
Ron
mikeyb19
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June 12th, 2010 11:00
It didn't work it is still doing the same thing. As for using the Dell Resources CD it tells me that the drive isn't ready.
rdunnill
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June 12th, 2010 16:00
Not sure ... if it were me, I'd buy a new hard drive and try and clone the old one over. If the clone failed, my last recourse would be to send the drive to a data recovery service.
I've only had one hard drive fail in the last several years (I plugged it into a damaged mainboard) but fortunately it was a clone and the original wasn't damaged. (I bought a new drive and cloned the original over.)
If you can't boot off of the original hard drive, unplug the original HD, install a new drive to SATA0 and install Windows. Then install the old hard drive to another SATA post, boot, and see if the original drive shows up. If it does, you may have a boot problem with the old drive but you should still be able to clone over the contents. These days, the cloning utilities (like Norton Ghost) are Windows-based; the version of Ghost I usually use is DOS-based and boots off of a floppy.
RoHe
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June 12th, 2010 21:00
If you're still under warranty, contact Dell Tech Support for a replacement hard drive. Ask them to send you an "imaged" drive so you don't have to format it and install Windows on it.
If you're not under warranty, you may have to buy a new hard drive. Format it and and install Windows, drivers, microsoft updates and software.
Either way, after you have Windows etc installed, you can reconnect the old hard drive and attempt to copy your files off.
Data recovery services are very expensive, so you'll have to decide if it's worth the expense...
Ron
mikeyb19
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June 12th, 2010 23:00
I think I found out the problem. Seagate and Dell had a firmware problem on some of their drives (500GB, 750GB, 1TB). Well I didn't have the update and so my drive "bricked" up. I emailed Seagate recovery Saturday night so we will see what they say. I guess they are supposed to do get it working free.