Hard Drive first not booting Windows, now not recognized in BIOS

[SavageEagle]

Hello! Having some serious issues, as it seems we all have. So, here's the situation. As a nerd truck driver I bought a laptop for skyping with the family and playing games. Laptop was working fine one night and the next morning I start it up and windows won't boot. Just gives me a blank screen with the infamous blinking cursor in the top left.

After searching the forums, it appears I need the Win7 install discs, which this computer did NOT come with. I may be able to get my hands on a reinstall disc, but I doubt it'll be a samsung laptop disc. I was, however, able to make a recovery disc from my wife's Dell laptop. I thought she had a reinstall disc, but we can't find it.

My current problem, and the most troubling, is that now BIOS doesn't even show the HDD. I checked the connections and they are fine, and I was able to put the SATA drive in my desktop and copied all my important data to my desktop. So I know the drive is good. Nothing is corrupted and all partitions, including the recovery partition is intact. I can't figure out why the laptop isn't showing the drive in BIOS now, though.

I've tried the recovery disc a second time, but it doesn't seem to want to boot correctly now. It worked fine when the HDD was recognized, but now it's getting to the blinking screen, then the cursor jumps to the bottom right and pixelates across the bottom of the screen like it's trying to load.

I can probably get my hands on a reinstall disc if I can download one or ask around tomorrow, but right now I need to figure out the HDD problem. Any ideas?

PS: I know this has been covered NUMEROUS times, but none of the other threads have been any help with these issues. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[SavageEagle]

Ok, I got the recovery disc to boot again, but still don't have the HDD in BIOS yet. Only option that works in the recovery disc is the command prompt. searching for the HDD that way, but so far, I have only found D: which has the Dirs: Boot, and Sources, and a file called bootmgr. This is along with X: which is obviously the recovery disc. So far, I can't find anything else.

 

[SavageEagle]

One more update before bed.

Couldn't find any drives through command prompt. Didn't figure I would since BIOS didn't load it.

So I grabbed the wife's Dell laptop and swapped HDDs. My HDD showed up in her computer (didn't boot it, just into BIOS), but her HDD didn't show up in my BIOS.

Checked the cables one last time, everything looks fine and nothing is disconnected, bent, burnt, etc. Swapped HDDs back to their respective laptops, hers boots fine, mine still won't recognize the HDD.

Could this be a bad motherboard? How can I test it? I don't know if Fry's Electronics sells these kinds of HDD cables, but I can check. Also, this was built Jan 2011 and is a factory Refub. What's the chances it has any kind of warranty left if it ever had one?

 

[SavageEagle]

I suppose this issue is pretty played out. Maybe I should junk the whole laptop?

 

[SavageEagle]

I do have a copy of Win7 64 bit now if that helps. I'm really hoping it's not the motherboard. I just dropped $750 on this refurbed laptop with no warranty.

 

[EzioAuditore]

Hi,
Welcome to seven forums and sorry you didn't get any response yet.
Coming to your problem, did you try resetting the bios to its default settings and updating it? Check the disk cables if they are properly seated when plugged to the hdd. Have you tried new cable?
I've asked some other members too to look into your problem.

 

[marsmimar]

Could you post a screen shot / snip of your disk managment? It's possible that something corrupted the C: drive and made it unallocated space. If so, it probably won't be recognized by BIOS. In any event, a snip would be most helpful to diagnose this.

Disk Management Windows 7 - How To Access Disk Management in Windows 7

 

[Dave76]

If you still can't get to the HDD, and it's not being recognized in BIOS, D/L Partition Wizard and make the Bootable CD or Bootable Flash Drive.
You can make this on your desktop or wife's laptop.

See if it will detect the drive's partition or just unallocated space.
Right click on it to Check File System which can correct errors to restore the HDD.
If necessary assign a drive letter if the partition doesn't have one, but do not create a new partition, you will lose all your data.

If it shows up as 'unallocated space' in PW then click on the HDD to highlight it and from the Wizards tab select Partition Recovery Wizard, have it scan the HDD to see if it can recover it's partition intact, then tick the box and Restore it.

If you have any questions, post a picture of what PW displays.

How to Post a Screenshot (or Picture) in Seven Forums

You can use Macruim Reflect to backup your laptop HDD, put it into your desktop and run the backup from there. Just backup your partition with the data, as the partition table is likely corrupt so won't do any good to backup the entire HDD now.
When your laptop is running again, make a full disk backup.
If you have another issue you can just restore the full backup and everything will be as it was on the day of the backup.

 

[cyclic]

I looked up Samsung's trouble shooter (was a bit awkward) and the only solution they come up with is that either the drive is busted, or not correctly connected.

I see you have tried the latter. Here's a Linky thing for you if you want to read more.

 

[SavageEagle]

Thanks for the reply, guys.

Hi,
Welcome to seven forums and sorry you didn't get any response yet.
Coming to your problem, did you try resetting the bios to its default settings and updating it? Check the disk cables if they are properly seated when plugged to the hdd. Have you tried new cable?
I've asked some other members too to look into your problem.

I did reset BIOS, but I can't seem to update it. The update file is an EXE file which looks like a downloader/installer. Using 7zip I could seem some files, but they didn't look like BIOS files to me. (I really miss the "chip" BIOS. So much easier to fix) I don't think I can update the BIOS on it without having windows loaded. When I use bothe the recovery disc and the reinstall disc in recovery mode, trying to run the file off my USB drive says that the computer has an invalid subset/subsystem/infrastructure to execute the file. Says the same thing when I try to run most EXE files.

Basically, updating BIOS is a no go. Which sucks, cause this laptop, Samsung RC512-S01US, has the most basic BIOS I've seen in a modern laptop.

Could you post a screen shot / snip of your disk managment? It's possible that something corrupted the C: drive and made it unallocated space. If so, it probably won't be recognized by BIOS. In any event, a snip would be most helpful to diagnose this.

Disk Management Windows 7 - How To Access Disk Management in Windows 7

I would, but I can't access disk management. Or anything else that would be in control panel. The disc just simply won't show up. In BIOS, or anything else.

If you still can't get to the HDD, and it's not being recognized in BIOS, D/L Partition Wizard and make the Bootable CD or Bootable Flash Drive.
You can make this on your desktop or wife's laptop.

See if it will detect the drive's partition or just unallocated space.
Right click on it to Check File System which can correct errors to restore the HDD.
If necessary assign a drive letter if the partition doesn't have one, but do not create a new partition, you will lose all your data.

If it shows up as 'unallocated space' in PW then click on the HDD to highlight it and from the Wizards tab select Partition Recovery Wizard, have it scan the HDD to see if it can recover it's partition intact, then tick the box and Restore it.

If you have any questions, post a picture of what PW displays.

How to Post a Screenshot (or Picture) in Seven Forums

You can use Macruim Reflect to backup your laptop HDD, put it into your desktop and run the backup from there. Just backup your partition with the data, as the partition table is likely corrupt so won't do any good to backup the entire HDD now.
When your laptop is running again, make a full disk backup.
If you have another issue you can just restore the full backup and everything will be as it was on the day of the backup.

Unfortunately, being a truck driver, I was only home for the weekend and yesterday. I've got to get back on my truck for a couple more weeks so I will try this when I get home and give an update. However, I don't see this working if BIOS won't recognize the HDD.

I have backed up all my files on the HDD, but as I stated before, I swapped the drive to my desktop and it ran fine, put it in my wife's laptop and it ran fine, and put my wife's laptop's hard drive in MY laptop and BIOS wouldn't recognize HER hard drive either.

This leads me to believe it's a faulty motherboard, but I'm hoping I'm wrong and there are other options.

 

[SavageEagle]

I looked up Samsung's trouble shooter (was a bit awkward) and the only solution they come up with is that either the drive is busted, or not correctly connected.

I see you have tried the latter. Here's a Linky thing for you if you want to read more.

As I stated, I've tried the HDD in other computers with success. The cable was examined by me and a couple others (it's about 3" long) and appears to be in good shape. We even got some pictures from the internet to compare to make sure the pins weren't busted or smashed, and all the pins and wires are in place.

 

[F5ing]

Obviously this is not looking good if the BIOS recognizes neither the original hard drive nor your wife's. It seems you're not going to get anywhere with it until you get that solved, and I don't think software will help (although firmware might). Could be wrong here of course.

Supposedly there are other SATA ports available on that motherboard. Being a laptop, I don't know how feasable this is, but with the cables that it comes with is it possible to connect the drive to any of the free ports? Or even swap it with the port the DVD is connected to, just to see if you can get the motherboard to recognize the drive?

 

[alphanumeric]

Software won't help if the BIOS doesn't detect the drive. It's almost certainly a hardware fault. The drive is detected in another PC so its either the cable or a motherboard fault. I'd re-seat the cable at both ends if you can. If it still won't work I'd swap the data cable out. That may not be easy if its a custom cable. Do you know if its IDE or SATA? IDE will be a wide ribbon cable and SATA a thin narrow cable. Does the optical drive work OK?

 

[F5ing]

Something I found today relating to your issue:

Samsung RC512 - Page 11

 

[karlsnooks]

SavageEagle,

Don't panic.

All is not lost.

Frequently, connections come loose in laptops. In reality, a laptop is a delicate device compared to a monkey wrench.

From your various posts, I'm trying to determine if your computer turns on? Can you get Windows to run?

Let's backtrack.

You can get into the bios? Correct?

Your laptop disk doesn't show in the bios? Correct?

On another computer, download MEMTEST 86+ and burn the download to CD.

Boot your computer from the CD.

Run Memtest. You won't need to run 6 levels, just 2 will suffice. We just want the big picture.

Answer all questions please and let us know the results of the ram test.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html?ltr=R

 

[SavageEagle]

SavageEagle,

Don't panic.

All is not lost.

Frequently, connections come loose in laptops. In reality, a laptop is a delicate device compared to a monkey wrench.

From your various posts, I'm trying to determine if your computer turns on? Can you get Windows to run?

Let's backtrack.

You can get into the bios? Correct?

Your laptop disk doesn't show in the bios? Correct?

On another computer, download MEMTEST 86+ and burn the download to CD.

Boot your computer from the CD.

Run Memtest. You won't need to run 6 levels, just 2 will suffice. We just want the big picture.

Answer all questions please and let us know the results of the ram test.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html?ltr=R

Correct and correct.

And a small piece of good news, I got the HDD recognized once again in BIOS. I ejected the Blu-Ray drive from the system to see if I could see any other SATA ports. I could not, and attaching the HDD to the BD-ROM port was a no go as it's fixed and not a cable. Judging from the link in the post previous to yours, this may have done the trick.

However, I still cannot boot the HDD to Windows. It says there is a disk error, but the HDD runs fine on my desktop. Unfortunately, I am out on the road and do not have access to another computer except for my phone and I left my thumb drive at home as well.

I will have to try the memtest program in a couple weeks when I get back. Is there a memtest on the Windows reinstall cd that I can run instead?

 

[SavageEagle]

These are the results I get from the auto repair modules on the recovery cd.

 

[SavageEagle]

This part I do not understand.

 

[F5ing]

Memtest86+ comes on UBCD that you can burn to disc and boot from it:

UBCD for Windows

 

[SavageEagle]

Memtest86+ comes on UBCD that you can burn to disc and boot from it:

UBCD for Windows

I am posting from a phone. I do not have access to a working computer as I am a truck driver and stuck on the road until early May.