My new Hard Drive isnt working properly...

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xAbre1200

New Member
I Just purchaced an internal HD for my laptop and installed it. But after placing the windows xp cd into the cd tray and reseting, it says OS not found. Ok..... so I take a LINUX ubuntu cd and try again but same thing. Please help, below is the message I see a a few seconds after pressing the power button.

Argon PXE Boot Agent v2.01 (BIOS Integrated)
(c) Copyright 2002 Argon Technology Corp
(c) Copyright 2000 3Comd Corp
All rights reserved

Pre-boot eXecution Enviroment (PXE)
(c) Copyright 1999 Intel Corp
All rights reserved

PXE-E611 Media test faliure, check cable

Press a key to continue...

I preses a key and this comes up

Operating system not found
_
 
Your drive's jumper setting needs a change. Did you forget and leave it at the default cable select position or quickly change it to master. If set to master on an ide cable you have to use the end connector. It's a simple matter to see if that's the problem unless you ended up with a bad drive to start with.

Check the cable and the jumper setting on the rear of the drive's casing to see where that is. Some systems even laptops need it at CS not mastered.
 
PC eye said:
Your drive's jumper setting needs a change. Did you forget and leave it at the default cable select position or quickly change it to master. If set to master on an ide cable you have to use the end connector. It's a simple matter to see if that's the problem unless you ended up with a bad drive to start with.

Check the cable and the jumper setting on the rear of the drive's casing to see where that is. Some systems even laptops need it at CS not mastered.
Click to expand...

Im really not sure. All I did was slide the old HD out and slide the new one in. Could you please explain how to set jumpers?
 
Most ide drives will see the small plastic cap that covers a pair of small metal pins in a rectangular slot covered with CS stamped into the drive casing or marked on a sticker at the rear of the drive. Drives are shipped with this set to the cable select position. That plastic cap is referred to as the jumper itself since it jumps two contacts. There's a small metal contact strip inside the cap itself to make the electrical connection.

Take a look at the old drive to see where the jumper is set there. You will see MA=master with SL or SA=slave and CS or CA for cable select. The original drive was most likely set to the master position. When you installed the new drive it was left at cable select. Verify the setting on the old drive and set the jumper on the new one to the same position. That should get you going right away.
 
I must remind those that this is a NOTEBOOK hard drive. Im looking at the old hard drive and there is nothing covering the pins. I ripped the black sticker off from under the old notebook HD but I see nothing there.
 
xAbre1200 said:
Argon PXE Boot Agent v2.01 (BIOS Integrated)
(c) Copyright 2002 Argon Technology Corp
(c) Copyright 2000 3Comd Corp
All rights reserved

Pre-boot eXecution Enviroment (PXE)
(c) Copyright 1999 Intel Corp
All rights reserved

PXE-E611 Media test faliure, check cable

Press a key to continue...

I preses a key and this comes up

Operating system not found
_
Click to expand...

This means its trying to boot from a network and theres no network present. Check the boot order and BIOS settings.

EDIT: I'll elaborate..... Go into the BISO make sure the hd is detected first. Then select boot option. There you can change the boot order. Check to see if the network card is second to the hd. If it is, thats most likely your issue. If that doesnt fix I almost positive its a bad hdd.
 
Last edited:
Most likely the reason no jumper was found is that the drive itself was made specific for that make. You could need an exact replacement from the manufacturer to replace it. Was the drive you bought through an online vendor like newegg or through a dealer for that make of portable?

What make and model is the unit? That can help in locating information on it. If the bios settings are found correct since you had Linux already running on the old drive. Don't rule out the new drive quite yet until some specifications and product information has been looked over.
 
PC eye- Are you sure there are jumper settings on l/t hd's? I have never seen one with them. I have replaced many hd's through online vendors and havent seen noticed them. I know for sure HP's l/t hds dont have them.
 
Ignorantguy said:
PC eye- Are you sure there are jumper settings on l/t hd's? I have never seen one with them. I have replaced many hd's through online vendors and havent seen noticed them. I know for sure HP's l/t hds dont have them.
Click to expand...

The laptop was an old COMPAQ presario but the harddrive was made by toshiba. It seems like a normal notebook harddrive. I compared the western digital one which is the one I purchaced from online from clubit.com, and they seem almost identical.... so im not sure what the problem is.

By the way, how is it that I am to see if my harddrive is detected? Someone mentioned through the BIOS?
 
Ignorantguy said:
PC eye- Are you sure there are jumper settings on l/t hd's? I have never seen one with them. I have replaced many hd's through online vendors and havent seen noticed them. I know for sure HP's l/t hds dont have them.
Click to expand...

On some of the earlier model notebooks you might this being that this was an older model the thought was there to check into it. For the most part the lack of a jumper can also be seen as cable select on the 2 1/2" drives. There the cable configuration sets it.

On specially ordered drives the configuration would have just that slight difference where just any drive wouldn't work. You had to buy replacements direct from the laptop manufacturer. But this goes back to the early models mainly.

xAbre1200 said:
The laptop was an old COMPAQ presario but the harddrive was made by toshiba. It seems like a normal notebook harddrive. I compared the western digital one which is the one I purchaced from online from clubit.com, and they seem almost identical.... so im not sure what the problem is.

By the way, how is it that I am to see if my harddrive is detected? Someone mentioned through the BIOS?
Click to expand...

CompaQ was a budget brand so they simply ordered in bulk from the lowest priced. That's why you are seeing the different make used there. For the most even laptops drives are standard 2 1/2" ide types. If you can disable the logo screen you can see the full post tests on startup. But the problem there is the drive isn't running and may not even be detected by the bios itself. Otherwise the type, make, and model number would be listed on the post screen.

If the option for assigning boot order is found look under that in the bios to see if it lists the drive there under HD0, HD1, or hard drives. If you knew someone else with a laptop you could have them test the drive out to see if it is defective. Circuit City, Compusa, or another place may simply plug the drive in and test it for you free of charge. That's another option.
 
IS there anyway I can get the BIOS to detect the harddrive? Because nothing shows up after I put the new one in except the little message telling me theres no OS and etc.
 
What the bios detects for drives is shown in the boot order selection part of the bios and mainly on the post screen when going through the initial post tests. Those are generally blocked from view by the make of the laptop. On desktop models going into the advanced chipset or advanced peripherals section will usually see the disable logo option way at the bottom.

Once you have that done you simply watch what is seen on the post screens where the detected drives are listed. If the drive is not seen either the drive is bad or something still isn't right there. The lack of a jumper shows it set at cable select.

But the problem may be the need for an exact replacement. That could do to a power scheme alteration so you have to go back to the laptop manufacturer for replacement parts! In other words the original drives have one or more things changed to make them different from any drive you can buy at just about any store or online vendor. Those drives were custom ordered from the drive manufacturer with the changes made.
 
PC eye said:
What the bios detects for drives is shown in the boot order selection part of the bios and mainly on the post screen when going through the initial post tests. Those are generally blocked from view by the make of the laptop. On desktop models going into the advanced chipset or advanced peripherals section will usually see the disable logo option way at the bottom.

Once you have that done you simply watch what is seen on the post screens where the detected drives are listed. If the drive is not seen either the drive is bad or something still isn't right there. The lack of a jumper shows it set at cable select.

But the problem may be the need for an exact replacement. That could do to a power scheme alteration so you have to go back to the laptop manufacturer for replacement parts! In other words the original drives have one or more things changed to make them different from any drive you can buy at just about any store or online vendor. Those drives were custom ordered from the drive manufacturer with the changes made.
Click to expand...

Hmmm you are right, that seems the most logical choice right now. Do you think I should return the laptop HD back to its internet vender?

I went into the BIOS by pressing F12 at boot and set the boot order to CD first (i had the linux cd in ) but still nothing.
 
The specific make and model information might provide a way of finding the specifications as well as other needed information on the unit there. Getting a replacement drive that will work really depends on age and who still carries the exact replacement. If the drive is bad returning it promptly certainly won't hurt!

The lask of seeing the bootup from cd does point at one thing you could try by not listing any hard drive in the boot order or simply disabling the hard drive as a boot device to see if booting with cd will work normally. If you can't boot up there that would explain why any hard drive wouldn't be detected by the XP installer since it's not fully loading.

Try assigning the cd drive as the only boot device until you see the new drive partitioned with the XP Installer and ready to be formatted and OSed there. The "no OS found" error is normal if you are trying to boot from a new drive instead of the installation disk or boot floppy on desktops mainly. There is nothing on the drive there. I am under the strong impression you have been to trying to boot direct from the new drive before anything was done like creating a new primary partition,master boot record, and the OS.
 
omg, will someone please help me? Since the new HD wasnt being detected, I took the old drive and stuck it back intno the laptop. Now the OEM HD isnt being detected!! Please help
 
It's starting to sound more like a connection or board problem. You could try replacing the drive cable to see if that helps any. A worn cable can be flaky at times when swapping drives even on desktops. Unfortunately the last laptops I worked on were Epson notebooks. I went through tons of those #($# things. In the long run you will probably have to bring it to someone who service laptops to have it looked over.
 
*sigh* thats what i was afraid of.

I dont know what caused this problem though, after I took out the original HD and stuck in the new one. The new one wasnt detected so I just left it in. A few days later, I messed around with it a bit and still couldnt get it to work so I swaped the original HD back in, annnnd it wasnt detected either. So I hold the power button down and press F12 and it brings up the BIOS. I go down to internal disks or harddrive (whatever it said) and it said not detected (or something similar to that)
 
The main problem with laptops is that they are all compact self contained units. If you haven't spent any real time servicing them you can be very unfamiliar with just how things are set up. Unlike a desktop where you can easily swap out drives(custom builds mainly) and experiment with jumper settings and cables there you have to go strictly by the original setup. Apparently the first drive was being seen until unpliugged suggesting the cable saw it's last day as one possible and likely problem.

The bios itself may have become flaky needing a fresh update or simple reflash if no newer versions are found. There should be a battery on the board itself that would likely be weak and in need of replacement. That's one more thing to look at. But to avoid making matters worse the suggestion of bringing it into someone who services and better yet specializes in portable units is probably the best move you can make.
 
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