"setup did not find any hard drisk drives ins..."

P

Puinsai

n00b
Joined
Oct 11, 2005
Messages
4
first off: im using my friends account right now because im out of the state other wise i would have asked him directly so if anyone recognizes this username, its not really puinsai, im his noobie buddy.

with that aside, im trying to install windows. before i left the states, we went thru an ordeal trying to get the hard drive to show up in the "american megatrends" auto detection screen, where it kept saying
no hard disk drive detected, although it showed up in bios.

we finally fixed that, so my comp started up, it asked for boot media, i popped in my windows cd, it started loading, then i get my prompt screen with my 3 options: press enter to begin setup, press r to repair, or press something else to do this, i dont remember the 3rd option, sorry, i was paying attention to "setup windows" so i press enter. then i get the screen saying:

"setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer.

make sure all hard disks are powered on etc etc etc."

i checked, they all are. so i googled the problem, and so far all ive found is something about SATA drives, and floppy disks, and i need it put in laymans terms. any suggestions?
 
You didn't say what OS this is so I'll take a leap and say XP... if that's the case this error is most commonly caused by having SATA drives attached to an SATA controller and the XP installer not being able to "see" the SATA controller when it's in native SATA or AHCI mode. If this is the case, in the BIOS there will be some way to set the SATA controller to "Native IDE" or just plain old IDE or ATA mode. When you do that, then the XP installer will be able to see the drive to install on.

If it's Vista, same issue - some controllers simply are weird and can't be seen because Vista can't possibly have drivers for everything out there - but with Vista you can put the latest drivers on a USB stick, a CD or DVD, or even an external USB hard drive if you have one so it can load them. XP can only see those drivers on a floppy, so... use the BIOS method to alter the controller and give that a go.

Good luck...
 
so i tried starting it up again, and now ive got the same problem as before, its not showing my hard drive at ALL now, i didnt even get to go into bios :( and just so everyone knows, i really have no idea what im doing aside from i know what plugs go where. (i think) as for formatting and software stuff, i have no strength there.

asus mobo
western digital hard drive
windows xp pro
 
"asus mobo"....mind telling us which one of the 100's of models it is?
 
guys who want troubleshooting help need to post you computer specs. cant help you without knowing what exactly your working with.
 
This is going to sound very mean, but it isn't intended this way. If you aren't sure enough on how to even go into the BIOS and verify that the drives are showing, or that the ports they are connected to are enabled, you should probably get help from a local computer store, or from someone who can watch over your should and check the right options. Messing with the BIOS, especially the drives, could render the system unbootable....even to the BIOS portion.
 
no its fine lol. ive just been really impatient about getting this to work again. and this is just a pet peeve of mine, but im not a guy. my mother board is asus intel p4p 800e, chipset i think is ich 5. vid card is ati 9600 xt. hard drive is western digital IDE (40gig, tiny i know.) trying to install windows xp pro. so heres what happened:

i finally received my old pc after about a year of just sitting there. it did not have a hard drive, and it had a bad ram stick (512 ddr-400 pc3200u). i bought a new ram, same specs. got a hard drive to get me by until i get a bigger one. this is the WD40gig IDE that im currently having the problem with. at first, it wasnt showing up in bios. fixed it by switching the jumper pin on the hard drive its self. i boot the comp back up, yay it shows up in bios, loads fine. i put in my windows cd, loads the items fine, then i get my option to hit enter to start set up. i hit enter, it tells me "setup did detect any hard disk drives installed on your computer" press f3 to quit. so i hit f3. i check all my cables one more time, then boot up again, and now im right back where i started, hard drive isnt showing up in bios. so now im both confused and frustrated!!! lol but i hope this give enough info.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top