hi i have a dell latitude cpi D300XT laptop and a while ago my dad instaled a damaged windoews xp pro disk and now when ever i turn it on it says (primary hard disk drive 0 not found no bootable device(s) selected strike F1 to retry boot,F2 for setup utility and it doesnt give me a chance to reinstal anything please halp
This doesn't sound like anything to do with the operating system, from your description. It sounds like your bios is not seeing the internal hard drive correctly. What C: drive information does the setup (after pressing F2) report to you? For whatever reason (surge, battery discharge, etc.) you may have lost your bios information and need to fix the cause and re-enter the basic hardware information. Other possible cause -- the edge connector that the hard drive attaches to the system is not fully seated. Has the drive been removed from the side housing ever? If no screws were ever removed then this one is unlikely. Failing both of those, hard drive crash? Do you hear the drive spin up, heads attempt to move? If so, try repartioning and reformat. Anyone else have suggestions?
i dont no if this is what you mean but it says in the config primary hard drive: not instaled is that my problem???
Is the rest of the information in your 'config' correct still? For example, is the system date and time still correct, or did it reset to something else? What I'm trying to check with this question is whether you lost your bios system information. If the date and such is all wrong too, then there's a good chance the battery backup to the bios died and all the technical information about your system was erased. If the time and date and anything else about your system you can view on the 'config' are still accurate, then it's time to look at why the hard drive information was lost. That could be something minor and unexplainable, but would more likely be a bad connection (power or data ribbon cable). Or, it could just be one heck of a dead drive, and nothing you will do will fix that. So, check your config to see if it's still accurate. If it's not, update the time and date, then shut off power for a few minutes, restart, and check it again. If it lost it again, then the battery backup is dead, and you can replace that first. If it's good then it's time to pull the hard drive and re-seat it back into the unit after making sure it's dust free, etc. Try this stuff first, and let me know what the research tells you. And, listen close to the power-up procedure and try to hear if you can hear/feel the hard drive spin up. Don't get confused with the system fans starting. Hard drives do make some noise different than the fans, but it's not much.
i thinki its the hard drive because ive aken it out and if i shake it theres something inside rattleing and it makes a noice when in the laptop
