PC Help

cloudy-day

closed wrote: »

does F2 go into the bios?

what can you see, are you looking in the correct bios screen, can you change the drive settings to auto detect, is the date/time correct, are the cables on the hard disk secure, can you feel it spinning, has the machine been moved?

new hard disk is far cheaper than a new pc

Thanks will check. The PC is certainly not making its usual noise.

closed

if it's pata (wide ribbon cable), a second hand replacement isn't much

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/80GB-3-5-IDE-PATA-Harddrive-DESKTOP-HDD-80-GB-Hard-drive-disk-ATA-/160811911028?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item2571230774

prowla

Sounds like the hard disk has gone awol. It is worth opening up the PC and checking that the cables are plugged in properly.

If you interrupt boot and get into the BIOS (I hit F2 on my Dell, but others use the "Esc" or "Del" key or another F-key), then there should be an option there to list the drives, and also possibly to enable/disable drives.

If the drives are enabled but not listed then you'll never get to the point where you will be able to see them in DOS or Windows.

I have in the past seen a drive listed but with a size of 0 bytes, which meant that the controller on the drive was working but the disks within it was toast.