Help Required: Format Drive C

[Bristow88]

Hello people, i have registered on here in hope that somebody out there will be able to help.

Here is the story..

My old laptop (Packard Bell Easynote K series) used to run fine, am not sure why but the DVD drive packed up one day and i searched long and hard for drivers. After finding them i had no such luck and eventually gave up with it just using the laptop for internet use.

I had been thinking and thought maybe if I could re-install windows (XP) it might magically bring my laptop dvd drive back to life and clear some rubbish of in the process.

I cannot simply put the windows xp cd in and boot from that as the drive doesnt recognise any cd, tried format in dos and didnt work as volume was in use.

Fiddled about with it abit more and I have now go to the point where the only thing the laptop can do is enter the BIOS, it does not recognise the HD at all just keeps asking me to select a boot device...

Im not realy that fussed as I have a nice new laptop now but it might stop some arguments with the Mrs if I had the other one running aswell. lol.

Hopefully someone can help

PS.. Laptop does not have a floppy drive so forget that. Tried external HD aswell but cant boot from that.

Regards
Matt

 

[adarsh]

Hi Matt,

Can you give this a shot? As soon as your laptop boots, enter BIOS setup and set it to detect your current hard-drive using Autodetect.

Save the changes and reboot your computer.
Does the OS load?

 

[Zatharus]

Correct, you cannot boot windows from a USB or Firewire hard drive. Linux and other OSes will work just fine though.

For the booting issues, you should check to make sure that you are set to boot from your hard drive in the BIOS.

With your DVD drive, have you tried running a cleaning kit through it? If that doesn't help and it turns out the drive is completely dead, you can purchase a USB portable disc drive. That option will be less of a hassle and most likely less expensive than replacing the internal drive. You can then re-install windows through that external CD/DVD drive if you want/need to.

 

[Bodaggit23]

Fiddled about with it abit more and I have now go to the point where the only thing the laptop can do is enter the BIOS, it does not recognise the HD at all just keeps asking me to select a boot device...

It doesn't recognize the Hard Drive or the CD Drive? If you've fiddled about too much in the BIOS, I would "Load Optimized Defaults", Save and Restart.

Then, go back in a see if the CD Drive is recognized. If the CD drive is not recognized by the BIOS, it may have bricked on you, requiring replacement.

 

[Bristow88]

Thanks for replys people,

Checked BIOS, it is set to load from the HD first and still nothing.

As fare as the External drive goes, will that just plug and play as its USB? Im guessing it would need an OS to work..

My BIOS Devices screen reads.

Floppy Drive A = None

Primary Master = 0 MB
CD-ROM = None
Parallel Port = LPT1, 378, IRQ 7

 

[adarsh]

Hi

I think your MBR has been corrupted. To fix it, we need to get into recovery console.
This cannot be done without a functioning CD/DVD drive

If you can get an external one, then you need to rebuild your MBR using your Windows setup disc.
Find the detailed instructions here.

 

[Zatharus]

As fare as the External drive goes, will that just plug and play as its USB? Im guessing it would need an OS to work..

Yes, the external CD/DVD drive will work just fine and should also be recognized as a bootable device by the BIOS. You should be able to use it to re-install Windows or fix the MBR as instructed above.

Try the MBR/repair install fix before re-installing OS completely.

 

[G25r8cer]

Correct, you cannot boot windows from a USB

Yes you can