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can't find hard disk drive on computer

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by royeltart, 2010/12/11.

  1. 2010/12/11
    royeltart

    royeltart Inactive Thread Starter

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    I have a Gateway laptop, which had Windows Vista OS. I had a problem with
    the OS, so I tried to reload a new OS. I have tried Windows 2000, XP, and a Gateway reininstallation disk, but the message comes up " setup did not find a hard disk drive on the computer ". I also got the error message of the ACPI not being in compliance (from one of the OS I tried to load):confused. I was able to load a Linux OS. Any suggestion on loading a Windows OS on my laptop.
     
    royeltart,
    #1
  2. 2010/12/12
    Steve R Jones

    Steve R Jones SuperGeek Staff

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    Guessing the hard drive is a SATA drive....Look in the BIOS to see if there is an option to run it in IDE Mode.
     
    Steve R Jones,
    #2


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  4. 2010/12/12
    royeltart

    royeltart Inactive Thread Starter

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    I looked in the BIOS, but did not see any option to run in IDE mode. The hard drive is a SATA.
     
    royeltart,
    #3
  5. 2010/12/13
    Steve R Jones

    Steve R Jones SuperGeek Staff

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    Look on Gateway's web site for drives for installing on a SATA drive. Usually have to pop in a floppy disk and do the F6 trick early on during the install.
     
    Steve R Jones,
    #4
  6. 2010/12/14
    TonyT

    TonyT SuperGeek Staff

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    If you already installed Linux on this drive, and you installed a boot loader such as Lilo or Grub to the MBR, then you won't be able to install any Windows operating system until you install new MBR code, else the Linux boot loader will remain and be unable to detect Windows.

    There are many free CDs with utilities to wipe or install a standard MBR that you can download, such as Ultimate Boot CD & others. Or if you have an external floppy drive, you can boot a Windows 98 startup disk and use the command fdisk /mbr to install a new MBR.
     
    TonyT,
    #5

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