AHH Can't boot!

[FiveSeven]

Recently I bought a brand new Lenovo desktop, it worked great for about a month and I woke up this morning and all the desktop will do is give me the error "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device" I insert the windows 7 disk and after I enter time and date it says a:/ and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to enter there to repair the boot. Any ideas on the problem? Or just what I'm supposed to do to get to repair?


OH and the first thing it says when I insert my CD is say Init cannot detect hard disks

 

[Dngrsone]

It may be something as simple as a loose hard drive cable, but considering that it's only a month old, you might think about returning it for warranty repair.

 

[FiveSeven]

I opened it up and see that the hard drive has FOUR cables that aren't hooked in, do they all need to be in? I don't see any slots they could fit into.

 

[Hsv_Man]

Yes make sure all the cables are in i'd say the Sata power has come out and therefore there is no power running to the hard drive.

 

[Dngrsone]

As a general rule, there aren't any loose cables in a commercially-built machine.

Is this cable attached to the drive but not the motherboard?

 

[FiveSeven]

I think they're coming from the power supply. There really is no way they can reach either the power supply or the hd though. Should I take a picture?

 

[Hsv_Man]

If possible can you take a photo and post it on here it would be interesting to see what is disconnected.

 

[Dngrsone]

Oh...

Yeah, there are often extra power cables... sorry.

Check your ribbon/SATA cables, those are the flat ones, and make sure they are securely inserted into their respective slots.

Hard drives should have one power cable and one data cable connected each.

 

[FiveSeven]

Yep there's 1 cord coming out of powersupply into drive 1 cord coming out of mb into drive.

 

[Dngrsone]

If both of those are correctly installed, then you have a far more sinister problem. You'll have to take it in.

 

[FiveSeven]

U_U computers computers computers. Anyways when I put in the win7 disk what is a:/ asking for. It's like a command, what kind of command? I tryed Fixboot, Help, Recover, nothing worked.

 

[Hsv_Man]

It's looking for a floppy in the floppy drive most likely because second boot device is A:

 

[johnb35]

Have someone that knows more about computers help you out. This could be either a loose data or power cable going to the hard drive or possible failed hard drive. Or it could also be a bad bios setting. Go into the bios and see if it detects a hard drive.

 

[FiveSeven]

Where do you see whether it detects it or not? All I see is choosing whether to disable it, do IDE mode or AHCI mode. I supposed that probably means it's detected. It's in AHCI mode right now, is that a problem?

 

[johnb35]

When you boot into the bios there should be a page where it detects or lists what hardware it sees like hard drive, cdrom drives, memory, cpu. Did you change the setting from ide to ahci?

 

[FiveSeven]

No I didn't touch this computers Bios until after this booting problem happened.

Only thing like that is devices which just changes their settings it says

USB settings
Ata drive settings
Video settings
Audio settings
Network settings

 

[johnb35]

If you don't have anyone that can help you out, you should contact Lenovo for support since it should be under warranty. The hard drive only needs 2 cables plugged in and thats the power cable and data cable, just make sure they are attached well and also check the other end.

Try this, leave the cover off and turn the computer on, listen to see if you can hear the hard drive spin up or take the drive out and put it in your hands and feel if it spins up. Does it make any noise, like clicking?

 

[FiveSeven]

My hard drive powers on and beeps

 

[johnb35]

You mean the tower? Hard drives shouldn't beep. Usually they make a clicking sound but I have heard them make a noise similar to a muffled beep. If the drive is making a noise then its most likely shot. You need someone to confirm this.

 

[FiveSeven]

It's definately the hard drive..I heard the beep in the beggining of all of this but it was really quiet, now that I opened it up and ran it it's definately the hard drive....