Laptop wont boot

[dave]

Got a mates emachines D620 laptop here,

it Had dead hard drive, bios couldn't find it programs on the hirens boot cd couldn't find it.
the recovery discs that came with the laptop couldnt find it.

so got her a brand new hard drive 250 gig old one was 160 gig.

installed it set it up with only 1 partition, put the recovery discs in, they installed, message said complete, disc pops out says click button to restart.

i restart after the bios press f2 for set up or f10 for boot menu. All i get is a black screen with a white dash in top left corner

i thought maybe its new hard drive is too big for the system so repartitioned it in to 2. reinstalled the recovery discs it said it was done, restart and its still the same :bang: help please i lost

 

[Ieen]

May sound stupid, but have you actually taken the CD out?

 

[dave]

yes, thanks for the reply anyway

 

[Ieen]

There is no beeping coming from the bios speaker is there? Have you removed the RAM and replaced it?

 

[dave]

no beep codes or nothing, will boot fine from a cd or dvd

 

[ben]

Some old laptops used to have hard drive size limits, it didn't matter if you partitioned smaller - they still wouldn't work.

Check to see if there is a BIOS update available, that might solve it

 

[dave]

version it had was 1.03 only download was 1.03a i think thats the same one? i ran it anyway no different.
on the hirens cd was a boot windows vista/7/xp from hard drive option, i clicked that and its now finishing windows setup ( the user name, time zone an stuff) :shrug:

 

[dave]

this strange. it boots to hirens cd. then select the option to boot to hardrive from in there.

if all else fails how can i make a boot cd with just that option? i could give it back to her then, cant trust them with a cd with all them other tools on though.

 

[dave]

ive installed avast on it and its doing a boot time scan an its found win32 virus, dunno how that got there from a clean install on a new hardrive, unless the recovery discs are infected

 

[arc]

Might not be a virus, just the AV software getting foncused.

What OS are you using, why are you booting from a boot CD and not the OS install disc?

Boot from the OS disc, go into the recovery console and type fixmbr

 

[dave]

it didnt come with no proper install disk, the discs it has have 2 options restore system to factory settings or exit

 

[arc]

What OS?

I'd be tempted to just get a copy of it, and use the serial number. Recovery discs have all sorts of extra bloat.

Try recovery and fixmbr first though.

 

[dave]

its vista home basic, i can hardly read the code on the stickers. i think ben maybe right about the bios not being able to cope with a bigger drive, i look for same laptop for sale on ebay and none have got a bigger drive than 160

could i use fixmbr from a vista ult 64bit disc?

 

[dave]

ah i pressed f8 on recover disc boot now got a this, edit me blind

 

[dave]

i chose debugging mode and it took me to same screen as before, exit just reboots

every option takes me to same screen

 

[colin79666]

i chose debugging mode and it took me to same screen as before, exit just reboots

Check the BIOS for Sata and AHCI modes. If it is set to SATA then change it to AHCI, or to AHCI if it is SATA. Worth a shot, could be the recovery image was in the other mode and therefore Windows has the wrong driver.

 

[dave]

Check the BIOS for Sata and AHCI modes. If it is set to SATA then change it to AHCI, or to AHCI if it is SATA. Worth a shot, could be the recovery image was in the other mode and therefore Windows has the wrong driver.

it hasn't got them options in there, its very basic hardly any thing you can change in it

 

[ChrisUK]

Ideally you need to get a vista disk / vista repair disk. It has a repair mode which looks for boot and mbr problems.

If that fails use the vista recovery console and manually repair using BCDedit.

 

[dave]

ive give it back now and left them with it booting from cd, they was moaning i was taking too long

 

[dave]

its back, now it keeps randomly rebooting.
they reckon they havent played with it, but now its got ms works on it, i told them they didnt need that as they had office 2007 that i installed for them