For the last 4+ years we have been using a HP Presario C300 laptop as our family home computer. Then a couple of weeks ago when we turned it on and it started to boot into Windows XP the screen suddenly went blue and the following message came up:
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
Technical Information:
*** STOP:0x000000ED (0x85BE6E30, 0xC0000185, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Now I am not super competent when it comes to PCs but I guessed this was probably a simple HDD failure. So I thought I would go onto eBay to buy an identical one.
The faulty drive in question is (according to the main print on the unit) a: Momentus 5400.2 80GB SERIAL AT DISC DRIVE. In even smaller print it says the model is a: ST98823AS
When I was looking at similar drives on eBay it seems most folks were just describing them as ‘Momentus 5400rpm 80GB’ hard drives, so I assumed this was exactly what I needed… and it still may be.
So I brought one on eBay and popped it into our old HP laptop when it arrived. I wasn’t really expecting it to boot into Windows since I assumed it was a formatted drive. But just in case I switched on the laptop.
On the screen the following message came up:
Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright © 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
For Realtek RTL8139(X)/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2. 13 (020326)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.
Then the same message above would repeat over and over.
So then I thought I would just install XP from a CD-ROM and I let the Setup go through its normal process, until that it is came up with the following screen:
"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in this computer."
So then I assumed I must have been sold a faulty HDD on eBay. But before going back to the seller I decided to try the drive in an external HDD housing/case I have sitting around. With the new HDD plugged in via the connectors inside the case I was able to access the drive and write and read data to/from it.
So then I thought let’s try the same thing with the original drive from the laptop. This time I could not access the drive at all (well actually the main partition, in fact I could access the XP recovery partition that HP put on). When trying to access the main partition I ended up with an hourglass icon and eventually it locked the PC I was trying to access it from.
So at this point I assumed the original HDD was faulty and the new one is working, but for some reason it won’t work in the laptop.
Finally I decided to compare the information on the back of the new drive with the old one.
Here are the differences:
Old drive: : Momentus 5400.2 80GB SERIAL AT DISC DRIVE. Model: ST98823AS
New drive: Momentus 5400.3 80GB SERIAL ATA DISC DRIVE. Model:ST980811AS
I’m not sure why the old one only shows AT and the new one ATA, nor the difference of .2 and .3
However I also noticed (but it may not be relevant) that the new drive had a Lenovo part number on it as well, so I assume it came out of a Lenovo laptop. Coincidentally I happen to know that many Lenovo laptops have a small solid state drive to assist in their patented ‘Rapidboot’ process.
It works in conjunction with the main HDD. But this might just be a red herring.
So can anyone shed some light on all this? Are these hard drives actually different and do I need to get the right one or is there another reason why the laptop doesn’t like this new HDD even though it appears to be working via another PC?
Thanks for any advice.
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
Technical Information:
*** STOP:0x000000ED (0x85BE6E30, 0xC0000185, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Now I am not super competent when it comes to PCs but I guessed this was probably a simple HDD failure. So I thought I would go onto eBay to buy an identical one.
The faulty drive in question is (according to the main print on the unit) a: Momentus 5400.2 80GB SERIAL AT DISC DRIVE. In even smaller print it says the model is a: ST98823AS
When I was looking at similar drives on eBay it seems most folks were just describing them as ‘Momentus 5400rpm 80GB’ hard drives, so I assumed this was exactly what I needed… and it still may be.
So I brought one on eBay and popped it into our old HP laptop when it arrived. I wasn’t really expecting it to boot into Windows since I assumed it was a formatted drive. But just in case I switched on the laptop.
On the screen the following message came up:
Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright © 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
For Realtek RTL8139(X)/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2. 13 (020326)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.
Then the same message above would repeat over and over.
So then I thought I would just install XP from a CD-ROM and I let the Setup go through its normal process, until that it is came up with the following screen:
"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in this computer."
So then I assumed I must have been sold a faulty HDD on eBay. But before going back to the seller I decided to try the drive in an external HDD housing/case I have sitting around. With the new HDD plugged in via the connectors inside the case I was able to access the drive and write and read data to/from it.
So then I thought let’s try the same thing with the original drive from the laptop. This time I could not access the drive at all (well actually the main partition, in fact I could access the XP recovery partition that HP put on). When trying to access the main partition I ended up with an hourglass icon and eventually it locked the PC I was trying to access it from.
So at this point I assumed the original HDD was faulty and the new one is working, but for some reason it won’t work in the laptop.
Finally I decided to compare the information on the back of the new drive with the old one.
Here are the differences:
Old drive: : Momentus 5400.2 80GB SERIAL AT DISC DRIVE. Model: ST98823AS
New drive: Momentus 5400.3 80GB SERIAL ATA DISC DRIVE. Model:ST980811AS
I’m not sure why the old one only shows AT and the new one ATA, nor the difference of .2 and .3
However I also noticed (but it may not be relevant) that the new drive had a Lenovo part number on it as well, so I assume it came out of a Lenovo laptop. Coincidentally I happen to know that many Lenovo laptops have a small solid state drive to assist in their patented ‘Rapidboot’ process.
It works in conjunction with the main HDD. But this might just be a red herring.
So can anyone shed some light on all this? Are these hard drives actually different and do I need to get the right one or is there another reason why the laptop doesn’t like this new HDD even though it appears to be working via another PC?
Thanks for any advice.
