lightshow
10-05-2005, 07:06 PM
I'm trying to fix my girlfriends laptop. She has a Dell Inspiron 8100
http://pcworld.about.com/news/Oct242001id66691.htm for picture and specs
The hard drive is a hot swapple hard drive.
This is the problem: When I boot the computer, it goes past the bios splash screen and then it gives the error message, "no primary hard drive found".
I have a good deal of experieince with hardware and computers in general.
When I leave the laptop alone for about a day or two and try to turn it on, it boots up to the OS (XP Pro) just fine. Then if I shut it off and turn it back on, the hard drive will not be recgonized.
I tried the live Windows Xp Pro CD, but the Bios won't detect it as a valid form for it to boot from.
I figure that the hard drive is pretty much dead, but I don't want to have to buy another one (since it is not a standard IDE interface hard drive, but a "special" hot swappable one that costs around $100 for less than 20GB)
Does anyone have any suggestions as to other options besides a new hard drive (I'm tight on cash right now, just paid college tuitition).
Other wise, I'm going to have to hope it boots up again, then back up everything to my external HD.
http://pcworld.about.com/news/Oct242001id66691.htm for picture and specs
The hard drive is a hot swapple hard drive.
This is the problem: When I boot the computer, it goes past the bios splash screen and then it gives the error message, "no primary hard drive found".
I have a good deal of experieince with hardware and computers in general.
When I leave the laptop alone for about a day or two and try to turn it on, it boots up to the OS (XP Pro) just fine. Then if I shut it off and turn it back on, the hard drive will not be recgonized.
I tried the live Windows Xp Pro CD, but the Bios won't detect it as a valid form for it to boot from.
I figure that the hard drive is pretty much dead, but I don't want to have to buy another one (since it is not a standard IDE interface hard drive, but a "special" hot swappable one that costs around $100 for less than 20GB)
Does anyone have any suggestions as to other options besides a new hard drive (I'm tight on cash right now, just paid college tuitition).
Other wise, I'm going to have to hope it boots up again, then back up everything to my external HD.