Windows 7: reformatted HDD not recognized in Bios or win 7 Install

Hi,

A friend of mine's computer stopped working a few days ago. When turned on they only get a message to change the boot sequence or insert boot media.



I took out their HDD and attached it as a external to my computer. I then backed up all their files (the drive appears to be working fine.) not being sure what the issue was I decided to reformat the drive and re install a clean version of win 7.

After finally getting the drive completely erased I reformatted as NTFS and installed it back into the computer. At this point The bios did not recognize any HDDs or optical drives (I had the win 7 disk in the DVD drive).

I created a bootable USB win 7 disk which the computer did recognize and initiated set up. At this point the set up process does not recognize any drives.

Not sure what to do to get it to recognize the drive. Any advise is appreciate. My initial thoughts are formatted incorrectly.

Thanks,
Jeff

Reset BIOS to defaults, set SATA controller to AHCI to try install.

In BIOS setup see if HD is detected and how it is set to boot. If not detected check the cabling which may have caused the original error message if the HD was still accessible when moved to copy out data.

Next test the HD using maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan, followed by Disk Check run from installer command line accessed by Shift + F10 at first screen after booting. Then use diagnostics CD Quick Wipe function to run Diskpart Clean Command, or run it from installer Command Line.