Bad Hard Drive?

[Nick M]

Sarah's laptop won't boot properly. It freezes up when it starts loading windows. Using the boot disk that came with the laptop, it does the same.

All the BIOS settings are okay.

Using one of my XP discs, I tried to load a fresh copy of XP - but when it gets to the "press enter to install windows" a message comes up saying it can't find a HDD.

I removed the HDD quick, and physically the connections look okay (no busted connectors or obvious exterior damage.

So what do you guys think... needs a new HDD?

This is a Gateway laptop, and I figured that a fresh install of XP to eliminate all that bloat-ware they install would be nice. I am a bit worried about finding all the drivers for her gear though. I'm assuming many of the generic windows ones would work. The lappy has integrated graphics.

Any input would be appreciated!

[Hdale85]

I actually love gateway notebooks for a budget notebook And to be honest they don't install to much bloatware as other companies. Is the HDD SATA or IDE? If SATA you should be able to connect it to a normal computer without an adapter so you could test it and run some diagnostics on it. If IDE you would need an adapter.

[RobP]

Instead of trying to re-install the XP, there is an option that will allow you to go to the C: prompt, see if it will even let you see the HD that way. It sounds like a boot sector is corrupt......I had the same thing happen to my sis-n-laws puter a couple of weeks ago.

I just used the Fixboot command and got things going....

[bigburner]

First tell us whether you got your wi-fi problem sorted out.

[Alloroc]

Nick,

This maybe something really simple and straight forward to resolve - as in not a faulty drive. First the drive is recognised in the BIOS, right? Firstly, is it a SATA drive? It sounds like it. If so, Windows will probably need a driver loaded for the SATA controller. Without this drivers Windows will be blind to the HDD. You'll get this from the Gateway site most likely but it will need to be specific to the machine.

During install you'll be met with the "F6" key press. This is the first blue screen to appear and you will see the prompt at bottom that says "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or Raid driver". You only have a few seconds to react to this prompt. If you miss it you'll have to start again. It takes a few seconds to load but you'll be met with a few more screens that will prompty you to insert the floppy with the driver. Straight forward enough - follow the instructions that came with it. Once that's done, you're good to go and XP should install. See screendumps below.









And so on...

All the other repair options noted will need to have the driver loaded so it can see the hdd.

FYI - Vista will(should) have this all built in and shouldn't look for the driver.

Anyhow, I hope this helps...

If it's not SATA and is IDE, windows would normally recognise it and install without problem so if it can't find it, it could be corrupt bootsector as the lads say and the other advice above applies.

[Hdale85]

I've never had to do this with a desktop which all of mine have SATA. I'm not sure if notebooks are different though but I would think they would be the same. XP has generic SATA drivers and I doubt gateway uses anything exotic. But I guess its worth a try But then again if it was working before then I don't see how the drivers could fix it. All 3 of the gateway notebooks I've had were IDE by the way. Including the newest one that came with Vista preinstalled.

[Alloroc]

Well it does depend on the motherboard and bios and the age. My PC - a Dell - at home has the most generic of Promise sata controllers and it needs the driver. It doesn't with vista though.. My HP laptop is the same and that's got an intel controller.

Interestingly I googled 'gateway sata' and this was the first link in the list. Perhaps Nick's model is here?!

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=20455&dscr=Gateway%20Notebook%20Computer%20Intel%20SATA%20Support%20DriverVersion:%205.5.0.1035&uid=183333707

No idea on Gateway though. They had a factory in Dublin for years and they were very popular in ireland for a long time. Dell really dominates over here and gateway could not keep up. They left the euro market about 6 years ago now...

[Nick M]

Okay guys, I removed the drive again and determined that it is indeed an SATA drive. That driver that Alloroc linked to is applicable to her model laptop.

Couple problems though...

1. The file is in excess of 10MB.
2. Her computer only has an optical drive.
3. XP seems to require a floppy drive.

By the way, the BIOS still recognizes the HDD.
The included OS reinstall CDROM from Gateway doesn't work either.

Help!

[Hdale85]

Hmm.... kind of strange. XP most definitely does not require a floppy I haven't owned a floppy drive in years. Did you make sure the boot priorities in the bios were set correctly?

[Kevin P]

The Gateway CD should include whatever drivers are needed. What kind of error do you get when you try to reinstall? Do you have any options for repartitioning?

[Nick M]

No, it will start the windows setup off the CDROM, but won't allow me to select F6 as described above. It asks me to hit F6 to load that driver, but it just continues on with me pounding the F6 key. Oddly enough, I can hit F2 to enter the BIOS when I first turn it on, and I can navigate through the windows setup, but it won't allow me to select F6.

This is starting to piss me off! :rant:

[Nick M]

When I try to use the gateway recovery CD the computer freezes up Kevin.

[aud19]

Generally if you boot to the mobo driver CD it allows you to make the SATA driver floppy disc as one of the options.

Every PC I've made with SATA drives has required the driver floppy including the one I did for my sis a few months ago. They all use ASUS mobo's though, so maybe it's just their's...?

[Nick M]

The Gateway only came with a reinstall/fix CD.

[dyazdani]

[Alloroc]

Nick, good, you've a SATA drive and it's not faulty. You can either try and fix the damaged bootsector using fixboot as previously described or re-install.

Eitherway, you MUST install the SATA controller driver from floppy - I don't want to confuse this further, but you MUST use a floppy - If it did not come with one, you'll have to acquire a USB one from somewhere. It will not work via CD or USD memory stick. Legacy technology.

Please look at my screenshots again. The very first bluescreen during install is where where you briefly get to hit the F6 key. It only lasts a few seconds so you've got to be on the ball.

Right, ignore the fact that the file is 18mb. I've looked at it. It's full of other useless stull. A driver file is usually no more than 100k or so. It extracts to c:\cabs and run the file called F6flpy32.exe. This will create your drive disk.

So, when you acquire a USB floppy, you can use it to load the SATA driver and continue to fix/reinstall.

BTW, the SATA controller in your Gateway is the same one as is in my HP...

It's a "Intel(R)82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller Mobile ICH7M"

Note: XP retail does not contain driver support for SATA during install. However, some manufacturers create their own OEM disk versions for reinstall that may or may not contain the driver for thier machine. Sony, I believe do this. Dell, HP, Gateway do not (or do not always). Some lark this.

Trust me. I'm an IT Professional 8) !

[Nick M]

So a USB floppy drive will work?

Sarah's laptop only has an optical drive... no legacy 3.5 jobber.

I tried placing the driver on a USB thumbdrive, but the installer wanted to load from a floppy drive. I'm guessing that changing the boot order in the BIOS wouldn't change this either huh...

If the laptop came with the reinstall/fix disk, you would think it would work?
Unfortunately, when you start the computer with the reinstall/fix disk it gets to the first screen that pretty much says "Hold on a minute" and then freezes.

[rdram]

Nick,

No expert here, but I had the same problem at work a few months ago with one of the older Dells we have. I pulled the hard drive out of the PC and attached it to my PC as a second HDD. The computer recognized the new hardware, and thru chdsk or scandsk...sorry, I can't remember what I did exactly, but my computer found errors/bad sectors on the hard drive and fixed them. We put the hard drive back into the other PC and its been working fine ever since. Might be worth a try.

RD

[PewterTA]

Nick,

Here's some thing to try...

The disc you have from Gateway *should* have the SATA drivers already loading when you insert the disc to start the Windows installation...

If you have a full Windows disk, the recovery console can be accessed by booting from the Windows XP CD. It will take its time loading the setup but eventually you will see the “Welcome to Setup” screen. Enter the letter “r” and a prompt will appear asking for the administrator password. Users of the Home edition or those without an administrator password can just enter a blank. (Note that this password is not necessarily the same as the one for a user account, even if that account has administrator privileges). The screen will then show a numbered list of all your Windows installations (most people will have only one.) It will ask, "Which Windows installation would you like to log onto?" Unless you have a multi-boot system, enter the number "1". You must enter a number. Do NOT just press the Enter key. Some time may pass but eventually the Recovery Console will load and provide a command prompt where various system tasks can be performed.

Once in there, you will want to try these...

Chkdsk c: /P - Will check for bad sectors in your file system & correct them.

Reboot and see if that works.
If not, go back into the console and try...

Fixboot
Fixmbr --these will repair the boot sectors of the drive. Since Windows will try to load, I think the problem is actually a bad sector (or incorrectly written sector) on the harddrive and CHKDSK should fix it -- which is why I say try that first.

Another thing that's nice to do is buy yourself a USB IDE/SATA connector (roughly $20 from someplace like newegg.com) and you can hook the drive up to another PC, copy everything you need off of it then format the drive (delete the partition & recreate it through windows setup) and start new.

To know if the HD is truly bad (physically), 9 out of 10 times you will hear the HD "clicking" over and over and that's the head trying to seek across the disk and not getting the location sent back to the controller. This is caused most times by the thin wires that connect the arms to the controller as they will break due to heat & use.

I deal with this type of thing on a daily basis, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

-Dan

[Nick M]

I have an XP Pro disc that I purchased for BootCamp on my Macbook. Since Sarah's laptop has an XP Pro license attached to the bottom, I'm just using my disc to reinstall on hers since gateway didn't include that original XP disc (in otherwords, no piracy here).

The BIOS recognizes the HDD, but the Windows installer does not (using my XP disc).
The included Gateway reinstall/repair disc freezes up upon booting from it.

I tried using the repair function with the XP disc, but again, it doesn't recognize a HDD.

I need some way to install the SATA driver on her optical drive only laptop.

Neither of us has a desktop, so swapping the HDD into a tower and repairing is out.

How the hell do I get the SATA driver in while reinstalling windows with my XP disc? The XP setup requires that the driver be loaded from the drive A: (3.5" jobber, or something the 'puter sees from this location).

[Alloroc]

Nick,

It's as I informed. You must use a USB floppy drive - It will register as the A: drive when connected. In your scenario, it's the only way to install XP.

I've pasted a portion of the readme file supplied with the SATA driver from Gateway. Please see below in bold and particularly the note and item 7 in bold italics.

You'll easily find one for about $40.



Installation

Note: Installation of this driver requires the use of a floppy disk drive. If your computer does not have an internal floppy disk drive, an external USB drive can be used instead.

Download the driver file to the desktop, and then perform the following steps.

1. If you have not already done so, locate and double-click the D00455-001-001.exe file that you downloaded from the Internet and execute the file. Files extract to the C:\Cabs\D00455-001-001 folder on your hard drive.

2. Insert a blank floppy disk in the floppy disk drive.

3. In the C:\Cabs\D00455-001-001 folder, double-click F6flpy32.exe.

4. Click OK to start the disk creation.

5. The disk creation dialog box closes when the disk is complete.

6. During the installation of Windows you will need install this SATA controller driver. Press the F6 key on your keyboard to install a third party controller driver.

7. The Windows installation program requires the use of a USB floppy disk drive and the floppy disk that was created above.

8. The Windows installation procedure attempts to load the drivers twice; once directly after the F6 selection, and a second time after the installation files copy to the hard drive.

9. Select the "- Intel(R)82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller Mobile ICH7M" option as listed.

[Nick M]

Okay thanks... I was just unsure of whether or not a USB 3.5" Floppy would be seen by the installer as the A: drive.

Off to newegg...

[Nick M]

Okay cool, I just ordered an NEC USB 3.5" Floppy.
NewEgg - $22.

To be continued I guess...

[Nick M]

Okay, got in the USB 3.5" FDD, made the SATA driver diskette, and started formatting the HDD for a fresh XP install - it gets to 58% and then freezes up.

Tried it four times and it freezes at 58% every time.

Sound like a bad HDD to you guys?

[Kevin P]

It probably is a bad drive. If you have another SATA hard drive kicking around, plug that in and see if it works.

[PewterTA]

What type of drive is the HD. I have most of the manufacturer disk utilities to tell you if the drive is bad (they all can be used with a bootable floppy).

Let me know and I'll send you the correct manufacturer's version.

-Dan

[Hdale85]

There is a Gparted Live cd you can download thats bootable and it will allow you to format and test the hard drive.

[mitch57]

Nick,

I'm a Computer Tech and I believe the problems is in fact the SATA driver. I have both the drivers for the Intel SATA controller and a freeware program which will allow you to create a bootable Windws XP/Vista CD with the SATA drivers already included in the installation CD you make with the program. I'm not at work right now so I don't remember the name of the program but I just used it about a month or so ago.

As others have said if that doesn't work it may be a bad hard drive. You can download the utilities to make a boot CD/USB/floppy disk to run the diagnostics to verify if it's a bad hard drive.

If your still interested, drop me a PM and I can make you an ISO file that you can burn to a CD with the drivers included.

[Nick M]

Well guys, I got the new HDD in and the BIOS recognizes it correctly.

Made the SATA driver floppy, and started the Windows installation. The setup grabbed the drivers off the disk and identified the drive as well. Next, it made it all the way through the NTFS format.

Now I've got more trouble.

It's asking me to "Insert the disk labeled Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver into Drive A: - Press enter when ready". My options are F3 (Quit) and Enter (Continue). Apparently this isn't included in the floppy I made, as it won't do anything when I hit enter.

Heres the real kicker - I called Gateway and they said the laptop is 5 days out of warranty, so I will be charged $60 if I want a question answered. Sarah told me she bought it a year and a half ago and that it was out of warranty. If I would have contacted Gateway last week, they would have had to eat the shipping, new hard drive, and labor to replace everything.

Anyone got any ideas about how to get past this one?

[dyazdani]

It apparently still has to do with the SATA. It's also possible it seems to get the Intel driver. I read something about disabling native SATA support in bios, installing, and re-enabling SATA.

Google the message "insert the disk labeled Intel Matrix..." and you'll find a lot of help. I skimmed a few posts, but don't have time to work it all out right now.

[Alloroc]

Try here....

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=2101&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go%21

[Nick M]

What misery...

Thanks Alloroc - I found those Intel files this afternoon, but no luck on getting the system up that way. It keeps getting stuck on that screen asking for the Matrix Driver despite the fact that it's in the USB floppy drive. The computer simply freees up and won't recognize the USB drive.

So I resorted to using the recovery disk supplied with the laptop. Oddly enough I ran it once and it loaded XP Pro, but with no drivers for anything. So now I rebooted with the recovery CD and I'm simply restoring the factory settings. The first time it took over six hours! This time it's going much more quickly. I've lost all interest in installing my spare copy of XP Pro... I just want the damn thing up and running now.

While I was at it, I backed up my Mac files and re-installed OS X on my Macbook to see if I could simply fix the wifi trouble with an "Armageddon Wipe". Unfortunately the laptop still loses it's connection and won't identify wireless networks after a certain volume of downloaded files (really weird). I know it's not my wireless network, because my iPhone screams on it still. I'm guessing its a hardware issue, and that really has me bummed out...

[Hdale85]

Your macbook I would say its either something with your router or the wireless adapter in your computer. It could still be a setting in your wireless router. Or does it happen when your using a wired connection as well? If not you may try and hit the reset on the router and redo all the settings. Or possibly reflash the firmware. Just some idea's. Of course it happened on someone elses router too. Hmm...

[Nick M]

My iPhone and other laptop are on the same wireless network and have no problems.

I just reinstalled OS X and updated everything, so I'm thinking it's hardware.

I dunno... :M

[dyazdani]

The USB drive not being recognized was another common issue I found while Googling... they had solutions...

[Alloroc]

Nick, Perhaps you could give Vista a lash. I mean, it will be an easier install process and it will have better support for the machine. Could be worth trying. Experiment with an eval. copy to see perhaps...

[PewterTA]

These drivers might work for you, plus they fit on a disk.

Copy them to a disk, install windows with the disk in, when it says press F6 for other drivers, make sure to press it. It will ask you for the disk with these files on it.

Presto.

Hopefully, you're done.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62909

If not, what model is your laptop? I can make you the disk with your correct drivers and e-mail it to you.

You can also go to Gateway and go through and they should have the drivers for you.

-Dan

[Nick M]

Okay, I finally found the drivers I needed on Gateway's site. You have to deliberately search for them, they are not listed in the drivers section of the site.

So I abandoned the attempt to install my copy of XP and went with the reinstall CD. The new HDD works great.

Thanks for the help and tips guys!