Compaq Armada M700 not recognising my new 40 GB toshiba Harddisk

[Alex_367]

HI all,iam new in this Forum and i will be so greatfull to have some information inorder to solve my problem.i have a compaq armada M700,intel pentium III 500 MHZ,128 mb RAM,bios last updated on 11/30/99.
problem is that i bought a 40 GB HDD (toshiba
DISK DRIVE MK4025GAS) installed in my notebook but the bios is not recognising it.......becoming an error thats says,non-system disk or disk error.what iam thinking is that propably the bios needs to be updated,but hence updating the bios is risky,want to ask if anybody have an idea of solving this problem without updating the bios,would be so greatfull for any further help...THANKS.

[Vincent Fleming]

That error indicates that there is no operating system on the drive.

Did you install Windows on it? It you took out your old drive and put this one in there, you need to install Windows onto the drive.

Good luck,

Vince

[Alex_367 · Accepted solution]

first thank you for replying to my question,yeah there is no system on the drive it is brandly new and need to be formatted,but i thought that first it needs to be recognised from the bios and than i install the operating system on it,anyways thats you for your help and i will try what you have said.......and i will come back and say if it had worked.hopefully it will work.......THANKS
ALEX

[Alex_367]

hi again i was willing to assign you points ,but i dont know there is nothing that says ASSIGN Points ,i dont know if that a failure from the site
if you can tell me how to assign you points would be greatfull.....
THANKS

[Roger Faucher]

Alex:

Is your problem solved?

Roger

[Omar Senussi]

Hi Alex, against each response is a dropdown box that you can select the nuimber of points you wish to assign..than at the bottom of the page is a button to submit the points. I hope that helps

[Antoniov.]

Alex,
you recorded yourself twice!
To assign point you must enter into indentity had opend this thread.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Alex_367]

yes your right i recorded my self twice......cuz i have forgot that i already been registered in this forum anyways thanks for reminding me....ANTONIOV
any ways back to my main PROBLEM.....i have treid many things for solving my problem but still it didnt work...
first i reseted my bios.and now when i reboot the pc the old error(non system disk or disk error) is not coming anymore.
second i tried booting from a windows xp profetional SP1 CD,but its not working ..pc is not booting from the CD...although i checked the bios setting and CD ROM BOOT is set to enable.
third i downloaded windows xp profetinal setup disk on 6 floppy disks...and i treid booting from the floppy disk it worked but it comes to an end where i have to take out the floppy disk drive and put the cd rom drive instead to continue setting up from the CD ROM...but the problem is that the pc is not reading the cd althought iam sure that the cd drive works.........so it says set up can not be completed.
also i treid booting from a normal start disk....it worked......and wanted to format the hard drive from there...cuz its brand new and need to be formated.....i typed FDISK,and FHARD in the prompt.........but it tells me bad command or file name .
i dont know what should i do next i treid doing everything that i know but still didnt get to solve it.............ANY IDEAS GUYS that can help ME!!!!.........THANKS for any further HELP!!!

[Alex_367]

want to add this.....now i restart the pc....and nothing happens,i just get a white blink at the upper left of the monitor....

[Omar Senussi]

Alex,
Could you point us to your original thread please? don't want to go over ground already covered. Looks lkie it wouldn't be a bad idea to upgrade your bios. You can get a plain boot disk for this from http://www.bootdisk.com

[Alex_367]

the problem is i got a new harddisk for my laptop and want to format it inorder to install win xp on it.....i got a win98 bootdisk as you said......restarted my pc but it wouldnt reboot...it tells me to tacke out the disk and restart the pc again.....so it isnt rebooting
what i need is a Boot disk containing the FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM programs........i know that win98 bootdisk should contain them.............but i dont know why it is not booting with it.............any idea why????/

[Omar Senussi]

It is not booting from the Win98 disk for one of two reasons
1. There are no system tracks on the floppy.. or it is corrupt.
2. The bios is not set to boot from floppy first.
If you cannot access the bios to change this.. you're in a difficult situation!
I recommend you download the floppy for bios from the link above, or the DOS disks (6.22) disk one shouild have the files you need.

[Alex_367]

first i want to thank you OMAR for responding to my Questions......
i treid again what you said.......downloaded the bootdisk from the link you mentioned....downloaded bootdisk 98SE and DOS 6.22....problem is always the same not booting it tells me to tacke out the disk from the drive and restart...
yes i can enter BIOS,i setted it up to boot from floppy..so its not from the bios
i made also a start up dik from win XP.......it did boot from it..but the problem with this boot disk i cant format my drive cuz it doesnt contain FDISK.....so any idea what should i do next!!!!!!!!

[Omar Senussi]

Hmmm..! You are REALLY having fun here!
Why the devil won't it boot from any of the other disks?? Do any of them contain the format and fdisk? How did you download and create these disks? If you have a second computer, you could try slaving your Tosh drive to this machine anfd formatting it this way.
If you have a disk cleaning kit, try cleaning your floppy drive.. might be some muck preventing it from workin properly.
If you hav, or have access to a copy of partition magic, you could create the partition and format it with that (create some floppies?)

[Alex_367]

yes iam really having fun solving this problem..........LOL.....i dont think that the problem is from my floppy drive.....cuz it has booted with xp setup bootdisks...which i have downloaded them from microsoft site and made the 6 disks with the same drive......i retreid making new bootdisks from bootdisk.com...downloaded the file and packed them on the floppydisk..
i also explored the disk.files are there....
xp start disk doesnt contian FDISk nor FORMst.....but the other bootdisks that i downloaded contain them...but they dont want to boot......that is weired.........dont know wot to do.........

[Omar Senussi]

Can you test these disks elsewhere? or get a known good DOS disk from someone you know?

[Roger Faucher]

Alex:

Does the BIOS Setup program give you the option of making the CDROM drive the first boot device? If you set it as such, does it boot the WINXP CD?

Roger

[Ronald Postma]

Hi Alex,
I wonder why you want to format it the drive, this option is in the WinXP setup, you do not have to do anything with te drive. During XP setup, you can create the partition and it will format the partion where you install windows itself to.

The you can forget fdisk etc. You can try two things,
1. Like Roger said, search for the bootorder option in the bios and set CD-rom to first boot
2. If option 1 does not work try a Bios update, Biosupdates can also make the computer/laptop work faster, seen that a lot on Dell systems.

BTW have you checked if you HD is detected in the Bios?

HTH,
Ronald

[Omar Senussi]

Ronald,
I think the problem here is that:

1. Alex appears loath to update his bios.

2. Booting seems to be a hit and miss affair with floppy, and not possible with CD. I presume that having set the floppy as first in the boot order, he will also have tried CD

3. He attempted the XP install from floppy, but once he had changed to CD portion (had to remove the floppy drive to accomodate the CD drive) it failed.

Alex, can you confirm this is correct?
Also, have you tried using a cleaning disk for your CD and floppy drives?

[Antoniov.]

Alex,
I'm a bit confused and it's not clear for me how your trouble is evolved.
I try to write some working list.
- You reset your bios (to factory default I think).
- You can't boot from CD drive; as other fellows I guess you have not CD drive in boot list.
- Your Floopy Disk drive works fine becuase you booted form it 6 windows xp pro from it.
Now I guess follows items:
1) You can boot from old HD with windows 98. is it true? If yes, have you two HD, one with Win98 and other where you will install win xp? Or else you have unique HD with two partitions?
2) You can't run fdisk or it doesn't work right. I guess it's the second case. Windows xp cannot boot on same HD where is installed win98; now I'm searching the MS link about this trouble.

Alex,
answer my questions to clarify me your situation because I'm not sure what is your hardware and your software.
Don't worry, here you'll be able to find your solution :-)

Antonio Vigliotti

[Antoniov.]

Alex,
here there is the MS article about multiple boot
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;217210
may be this reading can help you, I hope.

Good Luck.
Antonio Vigliotti

[Omar Senussi]

Antonio,
I don't think he's got ANY OS on his HD!

[Alex_367]

First i wanna thank you guys for trying to help me solve this problem...
1)tlaking about the bios,i think my bios is pretty old,last updated 1999,but it has recognaized my new harddrive,there is no option in my bios to make the cd rom drive the first boot device
boot order in bios is like this:
Notebook Multibay;first
Notebook harddrive:second
Notebook Ethernat :third
and CD-Rom boot and Floppy Boot both set to enable.......thats about my bios.
PS i never updated a bios before..thats why iam little scary to do this
2)i can not neither boot from win98 bootdisk or Mellenium bootdisk,nor from Xp cd
but what i can do is booting from a win xp start up disk.what i have done is booted from this disk and than removed it and inserted win me bootdisk cuz it contains the Fdisk File,and i was able yesterday to partition my new harddrive with no OS on it......sofar so good
3)wanted to format the drive with the same disk,typed in the promt format c:/s,didnt work cuz the disk doesnt contain the format file.
so what iam gonna try doing next is getting this Format file,and try to format the drive with it hopefully it will work.......
i will come back to say if it works...thanks anyways guys

[Omar Senussi]

Alex,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your multibay houses BOTH floppy AND CD drive right? So when you have the CD in the multibay, you've effectively got that as your FIRST BOOT device.
If you start the computer with the CD drive in the bay and the XP CD in the drive.. do you not get the prompt to press any key to boot from CD??

[Alex_367]

Hi OMAR,

no i dont get any prompt,thats the problem,its not booting although iam sure that the cd bootable.......and CD-rom works........cuz i can use my old harddisk,and it boots when i insert the xp cd.only with my new hard drive its not booting....