BIOS doesn't recognize any drives after swapping secondary HD's

[bmoremu]

A friend of mine was no longer able to get into Windows XP on her PC and wanted to save a lot of digital photos. So I took her PC, removed her HD and swapped it with my secondary HD. (My PC has a primary SATA drive w/ the OS and a secondary IDE drive for storage). When I turned on my PC, for some reason it booted off of her drive I had swapped in. I wanted to get online to do some troubleshooting so I removed her HD and put mine back in. That is when the "strike f1 to retry reboot, strike f2 to enter setup" error message starting occurring. I have reset my BIOS and cleared NVRAM. I believe I did this correctly because each time afterwards it would attempt the automatic IDE configuration. Anyways, the BIOS is not recognizing ANY of my drives (2 dvd drives, the primary sata HD, and the original secondary IDE HD).

Any help would be much appreciated, thank you!

 

[cdogg]

I had this exact same problem a few months ago:
thread779-1455470

Both installations of Windows are conflicting, with the secondary drive winning out. If you noticed, the drive letter on your original primary drive was changed to D: which is the reason it won't boot on its own.

If you still have your friends drive intact, there might be a way to reverse the damage using the suggestions in that thread above I referenced. If not, it could be a long drawn-out battle to restore it.

Good luck...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[wahnula]

I read the other thread, very interesting reading, but I'm not positive it's exactly the same thing. I may have missed it cdogg, but nowhere did I read where your BIOS failed to recognize any of the hardware.

First thing I would do would be to remove both hard drives, are the DVD drives visible in BIOS now? Leave the HDDs disconnected and flash the BIOS (many modern BIOSes can flash within BIOS)...any better? If so then try booting to your HDD alone.

If that failed, and they were both my HDDs, and of prime importance (i.e no backups) I would stop using both drives on your PC. Get a third machine, and a copy of GetDataBack, and restore the files from both drives before attempting any further repair. Sometimes in the heat of the moment dumb things happen; I would proceed with the utmost caution until all the data has been safely recovered and squirreled away. You started off with one bad PC, now there might be two.

That's just the way I think: safety first, proceed slowly and with caution.

If you do have a backup of your data, you can try a repair install of Windows once the drives are visible in BIOS. Exactly WHY they are not visible in BIOS is a mystery.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[buecker]

Sounds like your jumpers are backwards.

Make sure you have your master and slave drives set properly. Your bios won't read anything if your drives have the wrong jumpers.

 

[BadBigBen]

Buecker, he is using one SATA and an IDE... so jumpers are not the problem... so I'm with CDOGG on this one...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[bmoremu]

Thanks guys, this has been resolved. I think it was a few things. It probably started when the secondary HD was swapped in with it's jumper settings on Master. Then when it was removed the BIOS still wasn't recognizing my SATA, my only thought is because the SATA's labeled D:? Anyway, after making sure all jumper settings were correct and the IDE cable was hooked up properly, I turned off fast-boot, and eventually after enough BIOS resets and having it run the auto IDE configuration, everything is back to normal.

 

[BadBigBen]

Sounds like it got scrambled (the NVRAM)... glad you got it resolved...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[wahnula]

Ben,

Why would that affect the BIOS detection? It's outside of Windows, and if the BIOS still does not detect the DVD drives (without the HDDs attached) does that not point to a BIOS problem?

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[cdogg]

Tony,
Thanks for the correction. You are right. Somehow I skimmed over the thread too fast and didn't pay attention (or read far enough) to the part regarding the BIOS.

It's been a long week! Is it Friday yet?



~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[wahnula]

Weird...bmoremu's "got it resolved" post showed up after BadBigBen's second post, I guess while I was typing my last post regarding BIOS detection. Anyway glad to hear all's well. It was touch-and-go for a while there...lots of drama, we love that, especially when the outcome's good!

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[BadBigBen]

does that not point to a BIOS problem?

Yes, it does... as you know, information about drives, settings in general are stored in the NVRAM (non volatile random access memory), when these tables get scrambled, they can cause drives to be not recognized correctly... I know I answered this just for poise... ;-)

just to be sure though, I would suggest that he update the BIOS to the latest...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[bmoremu]

Thanks again, I'll see if a BIOS update is also available.

As I mentioned, my OS is on the SATA which is the D: drive. Should I consider changing this to C:? It doesn't sound easy based on what I've read and there's a possibility to really screw things up...

 

[wahnula]

Changing a system drive letter is possible, but not for the faint of heart. As long as all the applications work I say live with it.

In my book it's easier to do a clean install, after of course backing up data.

Tony

Users helping Users...