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From: undisclosed on 10 Apr 2010 06:14

Hello,

After changing the boot order in the setup my travelmate does not
recognise the hard disk. It does boot from the CD (UBCD4WIN) but still
will not recognise the HD (or USB key)

I think I have to flash the BIOS - there are flashing utilities
available for DOS and Windows but I need guidance for that.

Any help would be appreciated


--
kalten_jm
From: John Doue on 10 Apr 2010 08:16
undisclosed wrote:
> Hello,
>
> After changing the boot order in the setup my travelmate does not
> recognise the hard disk. It does boot from the CD (UBCD4WIN) but still
> will not recognise the HD (or USB key)
>
> I think I have to flash the BIOS - there are flashing utilities
> available for DOS and Windows but I need guidance for that.
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
>

If your hard disk was recognized properly before you changed the boot
order, it should still be recognized. Flashing the Bios is a last resort
solution, assuming there is a new firware available. I would not do that.

I suggest you reset the Bios to its original configuration (there
certainly is such an option in your bios menu) and see if the hd is this
time recognized. Sometimes, the bios settings can get corrupted and
resetting them to the factory configuration cures that. Once the HD is
recognized, change back the settings to what you want.


--
John Doue

From: undisclosed on 10 Apr 2010 10:52

I resetted to the factory settings and resetted the boot order..
Still nothing - No hard disk


--
kalten_jm
From: John Doue on 10 Apr 2010 11:39
On 4/10/2010 5:52 PM, undisclosed wrote:
> I resetted to the factory settings and resetted the boot order..
> Still nothing - No hard disk
>
>
I do not know your machine. If the hard disk can be relatively easily
removed, I would now remove it, and reinsert it. Just in case.

Beyond that, was the disk the original that came with the machine?

Although it would be quite a coincidence, a failure of the disk cannot
be ruled out. If you have or can get your hands on an external usb
enclosure, boot to a dvd-cd, connect the enclosure and see if the disk
works.

--
John Doue
From: BillW50 on 10 Apr 2010 15:44
John Doue wrote on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:39:29 +0300:
> On 4/10/2010 5:52 PM, undisclosed wrote:
>> I resetted to the factory settings and resetted the boot order..
>> Still nothing - No hard disk
>>
>>
> I do not know your machine. If the hard disk can be relatively easily
> removed, I would now remove it, and reinsert it. Just in case.
>
> Beyond that, was the disk the original that came with the machine?
>
> Although it would be quite a coincidence, a failure of the disk cannot
> be ruled out. If you have or can get your hands on an external usb
> enclosure, boot to a dvd-cd, connect the enclosure and see if the disk
> works.

I would normally agree with you John. But what bothers me is in the
original post they say that the USB key (aka flash drive) can't be seen
by the BIOS either. That doesn't sound good at all to me.

So the BIOS can't see the USB or the hard drive, but can see the optical
drive. Now many BIOS also has a boot menu. On my many Asus and Gateway
computers, hitting the ESC key when the screen first lights up will pop
up the boot menu. There you can select the device you wish to boot from
manually.

The ESC key isn't universal. On my Asus computers, it is the only way to
get there. My Gateways, it is the ESC key or one of the function keys
will work too. I don't recall which other one, F10 or F1 seems to come
to mind. But I would try to get to the boot menu and try that next.

Now when undisclosed says: "but still will not recognise the HD (or USB
key)". Hopefully they are talking about a bootable flash drive. As if
they are not, the BIOS should still see it but get an error that no OS
is found or something if they try to boot from it.

Hopefully undisclosed isn't getting missing OS errors confused with the
BIOS not seeing either of them. As this would be a totally different
problem. Then it would be a missing MBR and/or OS.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)
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