crashed alienware and not windows not dectecting hardrive

i have an "alienware m5700 series" laptop running windows xp service pack 2. i was running my avast antivirus and i deleted 2 trojins that were in windows system folders, after the scan had finished i went to log into my account and it would start then immediately log me out. i then restarted my computer in safe mode and tried logging in the administrator account, i was immediately logged out then i tryed the my windows account the same thing happened i was immediately logged out of my account.then i got out my windows xp service pack 2 reinstallation disk and i tried using the automated system recovery by pressing F2 when promted and it asked for a floppy disk i don't have a floppy drive on my computer or the floppy disk it asked for. then i just let the windows reinstalliation continue and i was prompted to repair windows xp by pressing R i did that, i was given the message: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. i pressed F3 and redid the process but this time i pressed enter to reinstall windows xp on my computer the exact same message came up. can anyone please either give me the drivers for my hardrive, help walk me through how to reinstall windows on my computer, or can someone tell me if i need a new reinstallation disk. Please help me on this

thank you

 

This happened to me when I changed which lettr I had windows assigned to. I simply solved it by reinstalling windows. A system recovery disk *might* do the job.

 

thank you for your input but i did try using a recovery disk and the same message came up: "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer"

any ideas?

 

Hmm, not sure... I'll ask around and see if anyone else knows.

 

You need to get into the bios and see if the HDD is detected properly.. Sounds to me like there is a wire out

 

my alienware's bios doesnt give the option to see if the hard drive is detected. Alienware has a terrible bios

 

Then we have a big problem with a suspected hardware fault and no way to check.

Google the motherboard details and see if there is a bios update available either from alienware or the original manufacturer.

can you boot from a cd?

 

okay im still looking for the bios update but if i do find it how do you install it and assuming that hardware is not the problem what should i do then?

But if i press F6 is said s for RAID or SISI third party drivers could i find my hard drive drivers and slipstream them into a new windows recovery disk and install them. do you think that my computer would recognize the hard drive.

 

sorry for the double post but yes i can boot from a cd, thats is what i have been doing, sorry for not specifying that earlier

 

You might have to make a bartpe cd. Then use this boot cd to bootup your computer.

Next you will use the command line (run box) to type in the following "chkdsk c: /f" without the quotes. This will run a chkdsk on the hard drive and fix the corruption on the system drive. If you have more than one partition, you might have to run chkdsk on every partition (substitue the correct drive letter as required).

I think when you removed the trojans you might have corrupted some of the system files. A chkdsk can usually fix this.

Once chkdsk has fix the corruption, your hard drives should be viewable again maybe it will boot up again as long as the repairs you attempted didn't overwrite anything important.

 

I'm prepared to put money on the "no C: found" error. If the dozy windows installer can't find any drives it's probably hardware or bios/ide or whatever drivers failure. No native sata support from the bios, and xp doesn't have any either.. they install from a floppy which is the only place the windoze installer will look for them.... and it's a good idea not having a floppy drive or port on a motherboard eh?? what bright spark thought that up then.

Lots of posts all over the place about the poor hardware reliability of these particular machines.. It doesn't even seem like a particularly uncommon error.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=89192

about possible bios update.. but not a clue how you are supposed to install it with no floppy drive.. usb floppy maybe?

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic8154.html

catch22 situation.. what to suggest.. hmmmmmmmm.. do you have access to another machine with sata ports you can run the drive in and fix it? Should be easy on a modern mobo with native sata support to run drive diagnostic/repair tools.

(note to self... next person I hear recommending alienware computers as top of the range is going to get some abuse off me.. bog standard hardware oem sold as something special without even the features the hardware manufacturers provide.)

 

If the computer was running fine before the trojans where deleted and after that the computer had problems booting, to me that points to a partition corruption problem. If there where any improper shutdowns during when the computer was reading or writing to the hard drive that might have cause the corruption.

I've encountered partition corruption problems where when I attempted to run a repair installation the windows bootcd could not find any valid windows partitions. when I booted with a partition bootcd, it showed the windows partition as invalid (raw).

When I used a bartpe to bootup the computer, I ran the chkdsk c: /f command, it found many errors and fix them all. When I rebooted the computer booted up perfectly. I know from personal experience how powerful the chkdsk command can be in bringing a dead computer back to life.

I would not mess with upgrading the BIOS which can cause more problems. Also SATA drivers won't come into play until windows starts loading, the recovery CD that came with the computer will have all the correct drivers that are needed.

If you are unable to run the chkdsk command, something you can try is to swap out the current hard drive and install a new hard drive, more than likely your recovery cd will work with the new uncorrupted hard drive.

 

if its still in warranty send it back, let them fix it.

if its not, the DIY.

Try re-seating the hard-drive, after witch hook the laptop upto a wall outlet and remove the battery.

if you do get Windows xp installed, and need drivers there is a wonderfull utility called ADIA32.

that has a very high success rate of detecting the exact hardware within your machine.

i will Agree that alien-ware is major hype, kinda like Iphone.

 

well i made a bartpe disk and i did the command: chkdsk c: /f and tried formating my hard disk but it was recognized, it says: Getting disk list failed. No disks?!?. and when i would try the chkdsk c: /f it would say: Cannot open drive for direct access. the only drive that registers is the b drive which is the ramdisk and it is only 32 mb. i have not found a bios update for my motherboard yet, i not sure which mother board i have and i dont want to accidentally install the wrong update and destroy my computer even more. i going to try calling alienware tech support and see what they say

if anyone has any ideas on what to do that would be great

 

mobo probably Uniwill P71En0 . [It's the same as Alienware M5700 and Amilo M3438G(Both brands are Uniwell resellers)]

I think due to the limited nature of the bios and the lack of sata drivers natively with XP it's going to need more tools than you have available. Time for a professional repairer.

Originally something most likely corrupted the sata driver.

Last chance saloon.. I bet puppy linux live cd will not only run but will detect and allow access to the hdd.

 

well got nothing to loose i'll try that
thanks

but is it really possible that something could corrupt my hard disk to such an extent that it would be unreadable or undetectable?

 

THANK YOU SO MUCH! i mounted the hard disk and every thing is there i was wondering if you could tell me how to formate it so it could be read by my windows cd and i can finally repair my hard disk

 

One more thing that you can try with the bartpe, is boot up with it.
Go/programs/a43 file management utilitys

Next rightclick on the C: partition/properties/tools/error checking

Right here you can run a scandisk (make sure both boxes are check to fix errors), scandisk is similar to chkdsk.

I would do that before trying to format the hard drive. Hopefully this can get the hard drive fix to where windows will recognize it again.

 

well i tried using the check disk and it wouldn't recognize the hard drive again. so i went back in to puppy linux and reformatted my hard drive to fat 32. then i tried repairing the hard drive on bartpe, said it was not for direct access. so then i tried to see if it even recognized the hard drive and it did not. so i went back in to linux and reformatted the hard drive in ntfs, linux and fat 32 again. i had the same results. when i tried putting the windows xp cd in it gave me the same message: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. well thank you every one for try to help me but i think im going to go to a laptop repair shop and just get it fixed

 

Those install floppy images that are needed can be downloaded from here,you need to get the right set,being alienware i'd assume you'd need, XP Home SP2 OEM,assuming you have access to a external floppy drive & assuming it even gets detected
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=xp floppy&DisplayLang=en

When you pickup the comp from the shop ask em wtf caused it & why then post back.

Not sure if imaging software would be any good in your situation if the drive has issues of being detected,still would'nt hurt to make occasional images now & again.

Free version tho limited in functionality unless buy it.
xxclone

or bought versions
ghost-by symantec-relax it works fine
acronis

Radified is a forum that specialises in drive imaging if you need free help
http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl