Hard drive....gone?

[squasher]

Yesterday for no reason I had a total bomb. I could not do a soft shut down so I had to power off the psu from the back of the case. Today when I turn it on, it tells me the windows is missing files and can not boot, that I should put into the install disk for repairs. So I put in the install disk, boot and get to the point where I am supposed to and hit 'r'. Windows then tells me that my hardrive is not being detected, even though it is detected at post.
This is an SAT hard rive which gave me a lot of driver problems at the first install, and I thought I was done with it. Does the message that windows is giving me mean that I have to find the drivers and get that all sorted? Thanks for the help.

[Edien]

You might have to load the drivers when it says "press F3 or whatever to load drivers for other drives" when windows cd is loading. :o

[squasher]

I never seem to get that option, it just says that I don't even have a hdd early in the install.

[Edien]

Hrmm you don't see the messages at the bottom of the screen when the windows XP cd is loading that says "Need to install 3rd party drivers" or something... hrmmm... Watch the loading text for the CD for it... it should say it even if you don't have a hard drive. I had to install my SATA drivers to boot off my SATA drive ... Took me a few minutes to figure out I had to load the drivers before it could find the drive.

[Xaotic]

You need to hit F6 during the first part of the OS load. There will be a prompt at the very bottom of the screen to "Hit F6 to load SCSI/RAID drivers." This will later request the drivers from floppy disk. There is no indication that F6 has been hit at the time it's entered. It will only be apparent later.

[Edien]

You need to hit F6 during the first part of the OS load. There will be a prompt at the very bottom of the screen to "Hit F6 to load SCSI/RAID drivers." This will later request the drivers from floppy disk. There is no indication that F6 has been hit at the time it's entered. It will only be apparent later.
Ya what he said :P

[squasher]

Thanks, ill try this later this afternoon

[dicecca112]

if the disk has sp2 on it you do not need to load drives, if it doesn't then you do

[squasher]

The disk does have sp2 on it, should I do something differntly then?

[Edien]

No still try what we said :P If that doesn't work...well if that doesn't work I dunno :P

[squasher]

Alright, I found my floppy drive and made a floppy for the drivers. Then I booted from the windows cd and hit f6 to install 3rd party drivers. It loaded a lot of stuff then sent me to the normal screen enter to begin, r to repair ect. I hit r to repair and it tells me that there is no hardrive. I try this a bunch of time and in many differnt ways and I never get a chance to install the drivers, can anybody help?

[Edien]

Hrmm it shoulda came up after it finished loading all the other modules.. When you see the command to press the key at the bottom of the screen spam it until yer machine starts beeping lol. It shoulda came up O.o Did you install floppy drive correctly? Hehehe

[shellshock]

just for s**ts and giggles, have you tried the hard drive as slave on another computer

[Edien]

^--- good idea. lol.

[shadowdr]

I have heard of issues with USB keyboards that are not initiated quickly enough to have the f6 detected.I have also had issues with my Web Office keyboard also not booting with f keys in the normal function mode and have to press another button to change them from app shortcuts to regular f mode.
If you are pressing f6 on startup (and this is detected properly)then you will get a promt to press s to specify adding other drivers before it asks if you would like to repair.Are you using a ps2 keyboard?

[squasher]

Well shadowdr was right, I plugged it into the ps/2 and I got the load the drivers screen. When I did however it did not seem to work. It might be my floppy drive however. I will get my hands on another and try that one later today.

[Xaotic]

One other thing, try using a different floppy disk. Disks go bad regularly and most creation methods do not scan the disks.

[squasher]

Now that finals are over I was able to track down the correct drivers. I am able to get to the windows install and it sees my hdd. I first tried repair but I was not sure what to do, so I gave up on it. I anybody can tell me what to do, that would be appreciated.

I then tried to just do a new install, but when I hit f8 to agree with the end user agreement, nothing happens. I scrolled all the way down and waited to see if they were trying to make sure that I read it, but still nothing happens. Can anybody tell me how to make this work. Also will doing a new install lose me all my old files?

thanks

[squasher]

I somehow forgot to hit boot from cd and it loaded xp!!! I guess I just needed to install the drivers, I will never know.
Anyway, case closed