laptop HDD not recognised

[stinkybee]

The HDD in my HP Pavillion dv6 2117sa is not being recognised and I wondered what I can do for further tests. In other words how can I check to see whether it is a motherboard problem or just a connection problem and what can I do in each situation.

Just to give you more details:

The drive is fine. It is recognised and boots on another laptop.

Other HDDs do not work in my laptop. It just freezes at the HP logo

I cannot enter the bios (ESC), start up check (F2) OR system recovry (F11) etc

It doesn't boot from the recovery CD either

If I remove the HDD then I can enter the BIOS (does this mean the motherboard is generally ok?)

Any help on where I go from here would be much appreciated

Thanks

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[DrB0b]

Can you boot a Live CD like Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc and have it work fine, if so then in general the motherboard works. Have you tried multiple HDDs in the laptop? It is possible the SATA and Power ports are busted or the HDD controller is malfunctioning. Will your laptop boot off of USB? If so, and you dont want to replace the motherboard, you could mount a USB HDD and load and OS to it. Poor mans way around it, but it would function.
If you are fluent with disassembly of your laptop, I would strip it down and see if there is any charring in the area.

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[BadBigBen]

I am afraid to tell you, but it does seem like your mainboard in that laptop is probably damaged, SATA/PATA Controller died on you...

the [highlight #EDD400]DEAD[/highlight] giveaway was:

The drive is fine. It is recognised and boots on another laptop.

Other HDDs do not work in my laptop. It just freezes at the HP logo

...

If I remove the HDD then I can enter the BIOS

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[rclarke250]

Ben is right, Also, that motherboard has the sata connector soldered to the board, so it's not like a cable came loose or something.

 

[stinkybee]

Thanks for the replies guys, I'm guessing a new motherboard will be an expensive operation.

I'm in the process of looking into booting from my usb drive. Any tips on this process would be good. I have ana image of the laptop drie stored but have no idea how I would go about making my usb drive boot.

Thanks again

Web Development Manager

http://www.freemoneyoff.co.uk

http://www.freemoneysurveys.co.uk

http://www.free-money-resource.com

 

[BadBigBen]

you will run into problems, booting from a USB HDD if the OS is XP. This is due to the fact that the USB drivers are loaded too late in the boot stage of Windows.

see, especially post #16:

http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14181

have fun... ;-)

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"