HDD not detected in BIOS

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AlenXX

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My WindowsXP system crashed beyond recovery, and I intended to reinstall it, but even setup via the XP installation cd gives a blue screen. I went into BIOS and found hard drives set to NONE, and can't be detected by BIOS, although the cd drive is detected. However, I can access the Hard Disk by booting from a floppy into dos, or booting from a usb flash drive into dos, and using an ntfs reader for dos. I was able to recover data files from the hard disk onto the usb flash drive in this way, which I wanted to do before reinstalling the OS.

I would just like some opinions as to whether or not I should conclude that this means the hard drive is ok and the BIOS is faulty, before I start trying to interfere with the hardware.

Thanks

Alenxx
 
Hardware problem resolved

Re: HDD not detected in BIOS: I opened the case and removed the CMOS battery, which apparently resets the BIOS and, on replacement, got no boot sequence at all (blank screen). Since there is a variety of opinions on the net about the importance of the battery, I took it out and tried startup without any battery, since the BIOS couldn't be killed if it was already dead. In fact, startup resumed, the BIOS detected the hard drive this time, and scandisk ran automatically, and showed the hard drive was OK. The OS crash is still there (corrupt registry) but the apparent hardware problem no longer exists. The battery tests at 2.4V on a digital multimeter, which is a bit low, I guess

AlenXX
 
welcome to PCR

Replace the battery, they cheap-as-chips and although you can't buy them from the chip shop, you can buy them from the supermarket.

:user:
 
Re cheap-as-chips

Thanks, I will. I remember seeing batteries that looked like them at my local shop
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AlenXX
 
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