Hard Drive not booting

bartman

I've been tryng to fix a desktop for a friend. It suddenly refused to boot, coming up with a message that no system disk was found.

It's an ASUS M2N4-SLI mobo, a WD2500sj SATA HD, running XP home.

I suspected that the MBR had been corrupted, and was going to repair that, but the thing that stumps me is that the HD isn't detected in the bios either. So when I boot from the system CD, that's no good, no HD found. I've even tried rigging up a floppy drive and using the F6 prompt for installation of SATA drivers.

As far as I can see the HD isn't fried. I can access it and transfer files onto a laptop using a USB docking station. It seems to be spinning up when in the desktop, gets warm too. Oh, and I've tried swapping the SATA cable, and using all 4 of the SATA ports.
I'm beginning to wonder if the mobo has failed.

I would be grateful for any ideas from the many people on this forum who are much more knowledgeable than me!

spakkker

I think the same. Could you connect another hdd and see if that is detected , you don't need to go so far as installing an os so could maybe use your own.

bartman

spakkker wrote: »

I think the same. Could you connect another hdd and see if that is detected , you don't need to go so far as installing an os so could maybe use your own.

The only other SATA drive I have is the system drive on my desktop.
I suppose I could connect it up, then just go into the setup to see if the bios has detected it.
It'll have to wait a bit now until the footy finishes!

GunJack

burn a copy of hiren's bootCD, fire up the lappy and boot from the cd, choosing the Mini XP facility and see if t it can see the file structure on the hdd. It's possible there's a rootkit/other malware preventing it from booting (I've seen 2-3 in the last couple of weeks like this). Then, use an avira recovery bootCD to scan the drive, if it is down to an infection then this could remove enough to allow the hdd to boot again.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

http://www.avira.com/en/support-download-avira-antivir-rescue-system (use the ISO to burn to CD)

bartman

GunJack wrote: »

burn a copy of hiren's bootCD, fire up the lappy and boot from the cd, choosing the Mini XP facility and see if t it can see the file structure on the hdd. It's possible there's a rootkit/other malware preventing it from booting (I've seen 2-3 in the last couple of weeks like this). Then, use an avira recovery bootCD to scan the drive, if it is down to an infection then this could remove enough to allow the hdd to boot again.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

http://www.avira.com/en/support-download-avira-antivir-rescue-system (use the ISO to burn to CD)

OK, I already have a copy of Hiren's boot CD. Presumably you mean I should put the hdd in the docking station and examine the file structure that way. I don't really understand why I need to boot with Hiren though - why can't I just fire up the lappy into Windows normally and look at the hdd via the docking station? And what am I to look for in the file structure?
Thanks for the Avira link too!

GunJack

put the hdd back in the original lappy and boot with hiren's. This also safeguards your other pc in case there is malware on the lappy hdd

soz if I didn't make that clear in first post

bartman

GunJack wrote: »

put the hdd back in the original lappy and boot with hiren's. This also safeguards your other pc in case there is malware on the lappy hdd

soz if I didn't make that clear in first post

The hdd is from a desktop. I've aleady tried booting with hiren's with it in the desktop, but it's not detected so can't be seen when I start mini xp from hiren's.

GunJack

bartman wrote: »

The hdd is from a desktop. I've aleady tried booting with hiren's with it in the desktop, but it's not detected so can't be seen when I start mini xp from hiren's.

which is why I suggested then booting from the avira rescue cd and scanning it in situ.....

bartman

GunJack wrote: »

which is why I suggested then booting from the avira rescue cd and scanning it in situ.....

OK I'll give it a go - have to be tomorrow now!

bartman

OK I have now tried hiren's and the Avira CD - but as i thought, the hdd isn't detected in the bios and so is not visible using either of those discs .....looks as though the next thing is to try the hdd from my system in the non-working desktop to see if it can be detected. I don't want to toast that one though............

fwor

Sorry if this is bleedin' obvious to you, but don't let it boot from your HDD or you may run into problems with Windows detecting a major hardware change, and requiring you to re-activate it...