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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
I have a Inspiron 8200 laptop that I thought to make work. It was
missing its hard drive (and caddy), as well as Ram and Ethernet card. I thought it might be easy because I already had in my parts bins all except a hard drive caddy and connector, which I quickly ordered cheaply on Ebay. I have determined that all is fine EXCEPT the hard drive is not recognized. I have tried two hard drives that I already have. Both IDE. Neither is recognized (so says the BIOS). Since the battery takes a charge, and I have the adapter to do it, I still would like make this Inspiron go. But maybe I am kidding myself. Maybe both of my hard drives are no good, as they were recovered from other laptops, but right now I have no way to determine that. Suggestions? XieXie WeiLienShih |
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
wrote in message ... I have a Inspiron 8200 laptop that I thought to make work. It was missing its hard drive (and caddy), as well as Ram and Ethernet card. I thought it might be easy because I already had in my parts bins all except a hard drive caddy and connector, which I quickly ordered cheaply on Ebay. I have determined that all is fine EXCEPT the hard drive is not recognized. I have tried two hard drives that I already have. Both IDE. Neither is recognized (so says the BIOS). Since the battery takes a charge, and I have the adapter to do it, I still would like make this Inspiron go. But maybe I am kidding myself. Maybe both of my hard drives are no good, as they were recovered from other laptops, but right now I have no way to determine that. Suggestions? XieXie WeiLienShih So before you go any further try putting in a boot disk into the CD drive and set the bios to boot from it to see if you get any satisfaction. Or if the machine doesn't have a boot drive attach a USB CD-ROM and also allow the bios to have it set as the first boot device. Do check out the specs on the machine to be sure the IDE drives you're using fall in to what can be used on the Inspiron. Possibly also substitute a different cable. -- Jan Alter |
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
On Sat, 25 May 2013 16:10:24 -0400, "Jan Alter"
wrote: So before you go any further try putting in a boot disk into the CD drive and set the bios to boot from it to see if you get any satisfaction. Or if the machine doesn't have a boot drive attach a USB CD-ROM and also allow the bios to have it set as the first boot device. I just did that. I tried three bootable CDs in the drive. Got same BIOS error - i.e. no bootable drive found. Do check out the specs on the machine to be sure the IDE drives you're using fall in to what can be used on the Inspiron. What am I looking for in the specs in that regard? Possibly also substitute a different cable. This would require me to take apart the case, something I am not experienced with, and something that I would want to be last resort. Which this case me I guess. Oh well........ XieXie (Chinese thank you) WeiLienShi (My Chinese Name) |
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
On Sat, 25 May 2013 15:11:04 -0500, Ken wrote:
All this is assuming on two things: One that your CMOS battery is up to snuff. This can be established by seeing if the settings such as the time is accurate and retained. It is. Some computers will not fucntion if they detect a bad CMOS battery. Secondly, I assume that the HD is spinning up when connected?? If not, it will not be detected by BIOS. Since a bootable CD is not detected in the drive, I assume the IDE controller is not working for some reason - as you suggested. If the above are OK, see if the laptop will boot from a bootable CD. That should tell you if the IDE controller is functioning, since I have to believe that both the HD and CD drive are using the same controller. If that CD works, look carefully at the cable used to connect to the HD. Me thinks the laptop belongs in the dump. XieXie WeiLienShi |
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
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Trying to Resurrect a laptop - Need advice
On Tue, 28 May 2013 09:10:41 +0100, Darklight
wrote: wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2013 16:10:24 -0400, "Jan Alter" wrote: So before you go any further try putting in a boot disk into the CD drive and set the bios to boot from it to see if you get any satisfaction. Or if the machine doesn't have a boot drive attach a USB CD-ROM and also allow the bios to have it set as the first boot device. I just did that. I tried three bootable CDs in the drive. Got same BIOS error - i.e. no bootable drive found. Do check out the specs on the machine to be sure the IDE drives you're using fall in to what can be used on the Inspiron. What am I looking for in the specs in that regard? Possibly also substitute a different cable. This would require me to take apart the case, something I am not experienced with, and something that I would want to be last resort. Which this case me I guess. Oh well........ XieXie (Chinese thank you) WeiLienShi (My Chinese Name) can you get into the bios? NO Wei |
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