pc wont recognise anything :(

caspa307

turned on my pc earlier got this message AMD Data Change - Update New Data to DMI.

now pc wont start, it wont find my hard drives, it wont let me restore windows, or anything (wont let me reinstall) any ideas?

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

turned on my pc earlier got this message AMD Data Change - Update New Data to DMI.

now pc wont start, it wont find my hard drives, it wont let me restore windows, or anything (wont let me reinstall) any ideas?

Sounds like the hard disk has died, does the bios detect it? If so run a low level diagnostics using the likes of vivard

Nick

caspa307

yoyo wrote: »

Sounds like the hard disk has died, does the bios detect it? If so run a low level diagnostics using the likes of vivard

Nick

wont detect a new hard drive either

mordeith

Guy here ending up having to do a reinstall

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

wont detect a new hard drive either

Could be the hard disk controller has gone, have you tried reseting bios to factory defaults? Is it a desktop or laptop?

Nick

caspa307

mordeith wrote: »

Guy here ending up having to do a reinstall

it wont let me reinstall though ive tried it tells me it was succesful then tells me to insert system disk a

caspa307

yoyo wrote: »

Could be the hard disk controller has gone, have you tried reseting bios to factory defaults? Is it a desktop or laptop?

Nick

desktop and i took the battery from the motherboard and put it back in if thats

what you mean

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

desktop and i took the battery from the motherboard and put it back in if thats

what you mean

Sounds to me like controller failure, new mobo time possibly. If you left the battery out for 3mins+ the settings should have been wiped, you can usually reset them in the bios as well, hit [del], [f2] or whatever at startup to enter system setup

Nick

Edit: what OS are you trying to install, XP?

caspa307

yoyo wrote: »

Sounds to me like controller failure, new mobo time possibly. If you left the battery out for 3mins+ the settings should have been wiped, you can usually reset them in the bios as well, hit [del], [f2] or whatever at startup to enter system setup

Nick

Edit: what OS are you trying to install, XP?

anything lol i have all genuine copys of win 7/vista/xp

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

anything lol i have all genuine copys of win 7/vista/xp

The reason I asked is XP can have difficulty seeing most sata hard drives without slipstreaming drivers. Sometimes vista/7 can be the same, look in the bios and see if you see any presence of the hard disk (look under boot device priority), if you see the disk being detected there, and not during setup there is a chance you'll need to get the SATA chipset drivers from the mobo manufacturers website, put them on a USB key and during the windows 7 setup at hard disk stage choose Advanced>Load driver and pick the driver on the USB key

Nick

caspa307

yoyo wrote: »

The reason I asked is XP can have difficulty seeing most sata hard drives without slipstreaming drivers. Sometimes vista/7 can be the same, look in the bios and see if you see any presence of the hard disk (look under boot device priority), if you see the disk being detected there, and not during setup there is a chance you'll need to get the SATA chipset drivers from the mobo manufacturers website, put them on a USB key and during the windows 7 setup at hard disk stage choose Advanced>Load driver and pick the driver on the USB key

Nick

no it dosent detect the hard drive at all

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

no it dosent detect the hard drive at all

Sounds to me like the SATA controller on the mobo has failed, only fix is new mobo

Nick

caspa307

yoyo wrote: »

Sounds to me like the SATA controller on the mobo has failed, only fix is new mobo

Nick

yeah thats what i was thinking but as you can probably tell im not the most technical in the world when it comes to fixing them, cheers for all the advice

dyer

i'd say it might just be an improperly configured BIOS...

try entering the bios and loading 'optimised defaults'

if no hard drives appear try setting your controller to AHCI and rebooting. it could just well be that you have the wrong setting or controller enabled.

ps. what was your reason for clearing the cmos by removing the battery?

caspa307

dyer wrote: »

i'd say it might just be an improperly configured BIOS...

try entering the bios and loading 'optimised defaults'

if no hard drives appear try setting your controller to AHCI and rebooting. it could just well be that you have the wrong setting or controller enabled.

ps. what was your reason for clearing the cmos by removing the battery?

tried that, umm someone said to try that is all

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

yeah thats what i was thinking but as you can probably tell im not the most technical in the world when it comes to fixing them, cheers for all the advice

Its no problem, the SATA controller going will mean any SATA devices ie Hard disks, Optical Drives etc won't work or be detected. Its probably nothing to do with the socket itself but the actual controller chip, hence none of the sockets work. If reseting bios, new hard disk etc didn't help, I think you've pretty much narrowed the problem down to motherboard

Nick

wexie

caspa307 wrote: »

it wont let me reinstall though ive tried it tells me it was succesful then tells me to insert system disk a

Is it a SATA CD/DVD drive you used? Because if it is it's very unlikely to be the SATA chip. If it's a SATA CD/DVD drive you might move the cable from the HDD to the CD/DVD and then see what the BIOS detects?

caspa307

wexie wrote: »

Is it a SATA CD/DVD drive you used? Because if it is it's very unlikely to be the SATA chip. If it's a SATA CD/DVD drive you might move the cable from the HDD to the CD/DVD and then see what the BIOS detects?

tried that both cables worked fine(as in it couldnt find hard drive either way)

yoyo

caspa307 wrote: »

tried that both cables worked fine(as in it couldnt find hard drive either way)

I'm assuming the SATA optical drive isn't working either?

Nick

caspa307

yoyo wrote: »

I'm assuming the SATA optical drive isn't working either?

Nick

nope that works fine!

wexie

There are a few things it can be then, but most likely not the board or SATA chip is its happily chatting to your optical drive.

You'll have to trawl through the BIOS and try various settings with regards to how the disks are detected : native IDE, AHCI etc.

Another thing to have a look for on the new HDD you tried is jumpers, some drives still use these and you might need to move a jumper to get it to work properly in the system, such as dropping the speed from 6gb to 3gb. (the old drive could just be broken and the new one not properly installed).

Check the power to the HDD, did you move the powerconnector from the optical drive to the HDD as well?

I'm sorry I can't be more specific, it's hard without knowing more about the system you have there.

yoyo

If the optical drive is a SATA one and it works fine you can rule out controller issues more than likely, what a weird issue :S

Nick

Sup08

caspa307 wrote: »

it wont let me reinstall though ive tried it tells me it was succesful then tells me to insert system disk a

Your problem is that the Bios is set to find a floppy "Disk A", enter the bios and find where the "Disk A" setting is and disable it.
It should find your HDD then.

caspa307

Sup08 wrote: »

Your problem is that the Bios is set to find a floppy "Disk A", enter the bios and find where the "Disk A" setting is and disable it.
It should find your HDD then.

ill give it a try

dyer

the insert system disk message is basically telling you that it can't find a drive to load the OS from. have you got more than one drive in the system? if you do.. try disconnecting all but the one with your OS on it and connect that to the first sata port on the motherboard.

go into your bios and find the 'boot device priority option', then set the harddrive to boot 1st (it usually shows a serial number), dvd drive second etc.

if no drive appears, cycle through the various controller options ie, SATA/AHCI etc then save your settings, exit and reboot.. re-enter the bios and repeat this process until the drive appears (hopefully) in the boot device list.

if none of the above helps, try booting from your windows 7 dvd to fix the mbr.
tutorial here : http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win7-windows-7-mbr,10036.html

btw the AMD Data Change - Update New Data to DMI message is normal, i usually get it whenever i make changes in the bios. unless you made changes yourself before this message appeared it might indicate the battery on the motherboard needs replacing.

caspa307

dyer wrote: »

the insert system disk message is basically telling you that it can't find a drive to load the OS from. have you got more than one drive in the system? if you do.. try disconnecting all but the one with your OS on it and connect that to the first sata port on the motherboard.

go into your bios and find the 'boot device priority option', then set the harddrive to boot 1st (it usually shows a serial number), dvd drive second etc.

if no drive appears, cycle through the various controller options ie, SATA/AHCI etc then save your settings, exit and reboot.. re-enter the bios and repeat this process until the drive appears (hopefully) in the boot device list.

if none of the above helps, try booting from your windows 7 dvd to fix the mbr.
tutorial here : http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win7-windows-7-mbr,10036.html

btw the AMD Data Change - Update New Data to DMI message is normal, i usually get it whenever i make changes in the bios. unless you made changes yourself before this message appeared it might indicate the battery on the motherboard needs replacing.

tried all that, i think im just gonna buy a new motherboard

wexie

caspa307 wrote: »

tried all that, i think im just gonna buy a new motherboard

NOOOO dont give in, that's what 'they' want you to do <looks around shiftily>

But honestly, if you can boot from your DVD drive then it's unlikely you're looking at a duff board.

When you run the Windows setup, at some stage it will have asked you onto what partition / drive you want to install Windows, what happened at that stage? You mentioned earlier it seemed like you went through the whole setup process successfully?

Have you tried disconnecting everything from the MB you can do without? unplug the optical drive, go with the minimum amount of RAM, take out any expansion cards you don't NEED and then connect the HDD to the SATA connector and powerconnector the DVD drive is using at the moment.

(I know some of this might seem illogical but believe me computers aren't always that logical (at least it seems that way), I replaced a motherboard the other day cause it seemed dead dead dead. New board was exactly the same. Turned out to be the network card)

What kind of board is it? And what kind of drives are the new / old ones?


Of course if you want to go out on friday night to buy a new MB dont let me stop you but there are plenty of people willing to help.

(also it PISSES me off when computers dont do what I tell them to)

wexie

dyer wrote: »

if none of the above helps, try booting from your windows 7 dvd to fix the mbr.
tutorial here : http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win7-windows-7-mbr,10036.html

having a buggered MBR wouldnt stop the BIOS from seeing the disk

caspa307

wexie wrote: »

NOOOO dont give in, that's what 'they' want you to do <looks around shiftily>

But honestly, if you can boot from your DVD drive then it's unlikely you're looking at a duff board.

When you run the Windows setup, at some stage it will have asked you onto what partition / drive you want to install Windows, what happened at that stage? You mentioned earlier it seemed like you went through the whole setup process successfully?

Have you tried disconnecting everything from the MB you can do without? unplug the optical drive, go with the minimum amount of RAM, take out any expansion cards you don't NEED and then connect the HDD to the SATA connector and powerconnector the DVD drive is using at the moment.

(I know some of this might seem illogical but believe me computers aren't always that logical (at least it seems that way), I replaced a motherboard the other day cause it seemed dead dead dead. New board was exactly the same. Turned out to be the network card)

What kind of board is it? And what kind of drives are the new / old ones?


Of course if you want to go out on friday night to buy a new MB dont let me stop you but there are plenty of people willing to help.

(also it PISSES me off when computers dont do what I tell them to)

oh i understand that but it dosent boot from the drive plus i could do with a new processor anyways, i cant fint the exact specs anywhere but the board came from a packard bell imedia s3210

dyer

having a buggered MBR wouldnt stop the BIOS from seeing the disk

true that.. i was looking a bit too far ahead!

troubleshooting a pc can be odd as feck sometimes caspa, i hope you find your AHA! moment.. if not, dump that thing and leave your woes behind

i don't know if you have a copy of hirens lying about? if so.. or if you choose to dl it.. there are some good utils on that to test the main components on your motherboard. you can grab it here : http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

caspa307

dyer wrote: »

true that.. i was looking a bit too far ahead!

troubleshooting a pc can be odd as feck sometimes caspa, i hope you find your AHA! moment.. if not, dump that thing and leave your woes behind

i don't know if you have a copy of hirens lying about? if so.. or if you choose to dl it.. there are some good utils on that to test the main components on your motherboard. you can grab it here : http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

will give it a go cheers