Setup did not find any hard disk drives.

[boston33]

Hello,

I am using a Toshiba Portege Laptop. It is using Win xp pro.

I think I am having a hd failure? It restarts asking if I want to restart into Safe mode or normal mode. It is a continuous restart.

I booted from the XP Pro CD. I can't run fast repair. I can't get to the Recovery Console.

A message shows," Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. Setup cannot continue."

I went into the bios and set the Original defaults. It seems to see the drive.

Can I get your advice? Is there anyway to t.shoot this or do I need to order a new hard drive? Thanks.

 

[vacunita]

What type of HD is it?

Setup may not be able to find SATA drives without additional drivers.

Since its asking you to start in safe mod,e its safe to assume the drive is detected in BIOS, but just make sure.

What happens if you start in safe mode, same loop?

You could download the UBCD and run the HD diagnostic tests, see if it can pick up the drive.

Also going into BIOS make sure any settings referring to SATA drives are turned on.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[kjv1611]

I am using a Toshiba Portege Laptop. It is using Win xp pro.

I think I am having a hd failure? It restarts asking if I want to restart into Safe mode or normal mode. It is a continuous restart.

I booted from the XP Pro CD. I can't run fast repair. I can't get to the Recovery Console.

More than likely, you're correct. That's especially true if there were no hardware/bios/software changes made prior to the error.

You can try the hard drive diagnostics that vacunia metoned from the UltimateBootCD (UBCD). Even if that doesn't turn up any errors, you could still have a problem, however... just keep that in mind.

A new hard drive (particularly if yours supports SATA) can be had fairly innexpensively, and it will almost always improve performance, especially if you're still using the original hard drive (assuming the machine is at least 1 or 2 years old).

If your system supports SATA connections, I'd personally suggest going for one of these drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=False&Order=RATING

Or if you want a little cheaper with a little less performance, but still really good drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=False&Order=RATING

With those, you'll spend $40 absolute cheapest, generally, up to about $85 or $90. And the $85 to $90 ones are possibly the best deals, considering what you're getting.

Anyway, let us know what you end up doing, and what progress you make..

 

[goombawaho]

Run the diagnostic test as mentioned. Run the SHORT test first if that option is available. Look at the results. Then to be sure, you might run the LONG test especially if errors were found in the short test.