Can You Reformat an HP with BIOS Issues and No System on the Hard Drive?

[beingben]

Ok, so i am trying to reformat my old hp for my little brothers to use. But I am not sure if i can. Its a hard-drive without a system. But i think something is wrong with my bios since it skips loading screen where you can F12 or F8 just goes to logo screen of hp. Then tells me there is no hardrive. Is there anyway to reformat this thing? And help is much need'd.


thanks, Ben

 

[Fujimitsu]

Not necessarily anything wrong with the board, the POST screen is hidden on a lot of PCs. Try just hitting F8/F12/DEL as it boots up, see if it allows you to access anything.

By "no hard drive" I'm assuming you mean it says there's no boot device?

Ways to ensure the HD is being recognized by the motherboard:
BIOS, should show up under "advanced" settings or the like... as an IDE device
Many PCS display a list of attached hardware between POST and boot, but it won't stay up long and may be hidden by the HP logo.
Boot to a CD or flash drive, and attempt to access the drive from there.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Gparted liveCD is a great bootable partitioning utility. I use it a lot at work. If the hard drive is detected, you should be able to boot to the CD and use it to reformat the drive (probably want to format it as one large NTFS partition).

If the hard drive isn't being recognized by the motherboard, make sure that it's connected. You said it's old, so it is probably IDE. It should have a power cable connected to it, from the power supply (4 pin, multi-color wires). As well as a wide, flat IDE cable connecting it to the motherboard.

If it's physically connected but not being detected, ensure that the jumpers on the drive are properly set. If it's connected and set up properly, it might just be dead. Strange noises or no vibration/noise at all is a good indicator of a dead drive.

I know it's a lot of stuff to digest, I would start by making sure it's physically connected... then try the boot CD.

lemme know how it goes

 

[beingben]

it vibes. i tried to format it in my dell, its seen, but then when it finishes to the part of where it loads everything at the bottum, it goes to a blue screen. Will try that cd later tonight i believe. Yes its an IDE

 

[Fujimitsu]

Try the gparted CD.

If you can make it that far in the winXP boot Cd, use the standard NTFS format (not quick) it'll run chkdisk which may detect bad sectors on the drive.

if you're getting a BSOD as the winXP cd loads up, the drive could be dying/dead...

Only other reason the cd would BSOD is a bad optical drive or memory, and I'm assuming the RAM/CD drive in your PC are in working order.

Sounds like the drive is either dead/dying, or whatever data is on it has been totally mutilated. Try the boot CD, but if it fails to you might have to buy a new one (or RMA this one... most drives have a 10yr or lifetime warranty).

 

[Stevedye56]

If you don't have the boot cd I found somewhere the recover console that you could use to re-partition, it has all of the Microsoft files that are on their site but in a cd form so they work...unlike the floppy files that they have...