New hard drive not recognized by W7 installer?

I own a Dell Dimension e520, it's an older machine that had Windows XP on it. I replaced the power supply and hard drive, and bought Windows 7 32-bit. The plan is to upgrade it to 10 before the July 29 deadline, I just hope I can meet it in time. From what I've read, this machine is capable of 7 and should be good with 10.

I've managed to boot from the Windows 7 install disc, but when I get to the "Where do you want to install Windows?" menu, the new hard drive doesn't appear. I have no idea what to do beyond this point, it doesn't even seem to appear in the BIOS. It's a 320GB SATA Western Digital.

If using a SATA HDD, your second and third picture show that the Bios is not recognizing it. Is the power plug from the PSU plugged in tightly? Is the SATA Data cable plugged into the drive and into the motherboard SATA port 1 tightly?
Windows will not recognize your HDD until the Bios does.
Once the drive is recognized, you should change the SATA operation to Auto Detect ATA

Look at the first message, at the bottom near the Quote key. I think your system has a bug.

Megahertz07 said:

Did you updated your BIOS? Go to Product Support | Dell US and add the tag ID.
What kind of HDD you had before? A IDE or SATA?
On second screen I can see on last line a SATA Operation. Is SATA controller enabled? Is it set to AHCI or RAID? If set to IDE compatible, change to RAID and reboot.

The previous one was a SATA. Hmm.. I don't know what the SATA controller is, honestly I'm not very savvy when it comes to the BIOS but I'm learning

I tried updating the BIOS but had troubles..

I created the bootable flash drive using the instructions found here and here. Once I had a bootable drive, I placed the BIOS file (DM061-020400.exe) on the root of the flash drive, but I still wasn't able to run it.

spunk said:

If using a SATA HDD, your second and third picture show that the Bios is not recognizing it. Is the power plug from the PSU plugged in tightly? Is the SATA Data cable plugged into the drive and into the motherboard SATA port 1 tightly?
Windows will not recognize your HDD until the Bios does.
Once the drive is recognized, you should change the SATA operation to Auto Detect ATA

The drive and connections were on tight.

One thing I do notice is that when I flip on the I/O switch on the power supply, the computer powers up for a second and shuts off. It never did that with the previous hard drive.


When booting up the first time its pretty loud. I also hear these robotic beep sounds coming from the hard drive bay, it happens for about 30 seconds and goes silent, not sure if this is the motherboard.


Regular bootup, more sound

bigmck said:

Look at the first message, at the bottom near the Quote key. I think your system has a bug.

At first glance I took you seriously, then i realized you were talkin about my siggy bug, Admiral Pupkin.. haha

Bios: I think you booted on DOS with a kind of shell. You should boot on DOS without Autoexec.bat and Config.sys
Doesn't the BIOS Maintenance have a BIOS update option?

HDD: From what I've seen on your videos, your HDD is dead. Is it a new HDD?

Buy a cheep 128G SSD and a HDD and install windows and programs on the SSD and Uses on the HDD. You're going to have an excellent machine.
SSD's: SATA III, 91GB - 128GB, New, Internal SSDs, SSDs, Components - Newegg.com
HDD: SATA 6.0Gb/s, 500GB - 1TB, New, Western Digital, Desktop Internal Hard Drives, Hard Drives, Components - Newegg.com

How much memory you have?

Yeah it was a new hard drive, was shipped from Amazon but I've decided to return the thing. The old one still works, it just makes a little racket and is almost 10 years old. I put it back in and the beeps went away. I decided to upgrade to 10 anyway, if the hard drive goes bad I can still put 10 on the new one as long as the mobo is still good. I updated the bios while I was at it, was easier doing it in Windows than from a USB flash drive. Still boots up pretty loud after turning on the PSU switch, but it's a new power supply and I assume that's normal.

It only has 1GB of ram and the hard drive has 320GB I think. It's pretty ancient by now but it can still play emulators pretty well :] I would love an SSD but those things are out of my price range :P

- The sound you hear when you turn on are from the fans. They spin at top speed than lower down. It's normal.
- With 1GB it's going to be very difficult to work on. You should have at least 2GB for 32 and 4GB for 64 Bits.
Buy two (to work on dual channel mode) DDR2 800 (2x 2GB DDR2 800)
AllComponents 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model AC2/800X64/2048-Newegg.com
- SSD is the biggest improvement in computers since multi core CPU. I would buy this one
PNY CS1311 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSD7CS1311-120-RB-Newegg.com. It's only US$40 and it worth any Dollar spent on it.
Believe me, you can have a system as good as the new middle end computers on the market.
- As you have win XP, Win 7 or Win 10 requires a clean install. It will format your HDD so BACKUP your data.
Win 7, in my opinion is a better OS. To go directly to Win 10, boot Win 10 installation (DVD or USB) and when asked for the key, put in the Win 7 key.
If you decide to add a SSD (that I strongly suggest) let me know so I can guide you through the installation.

Double said:

Yeah it was a new hard drive, was shipped from Amazon but I've decided to return the thing. The old one still works, it just makes a little racket and is almost 10 years old. I put it back in and the beeps went away. I decided to upgrade to 10 anyway, if the hard drive goes bad I can still put 10 on the new one as long as the mobo is still good. I updated the bios while I was at it, was easier doing it in Windows than from a USB flash drive. Still boots up pretty loud after turning on the PSU switch, but it's a new power supply and I assume that's normal.

It only has 1GB of ram and the hard drive has 320GB I think. It's pretty ancient by now but it can still play emulators pretty well :] I would love an SSD but those things are out of my price range :P

Take your refund money and buy an SSD. It will speed up your computer tremendously. Windows boots in about 30 seconds and programs open in one second. You won't be sorry. There is nothing different in installing programs than with a HDD. You might be wrong about the price of SSD. Check this out.
ocz, Internal SSDs, SSDs, Components - Newegg.com