Dell Hardrive problem!

[Rojer]

Basically was helping my mate out cleaning his computer wiping it all and starting it afresh all worked fine gave it back to him. Then he rings me up and says i did an antivirus scan then restarted and now it wont boot. The laptop isnt detecting the harddrive. Its like its not attached to the laptop anyideas, i seem to think its jst a harddrive failure?

 

[Reaver85]

its probably because the dell media direct partition got erased same thing happend to me when i tried to delete unused partions on the hdd it messes up the boot.ini and refuses to boot windows just reinstall the dell media direct with the cd that came with the pc and all should be fine.

 

[Rojer]

I didnt erase the paritions i just reinstalled vista home premium to wipe it for him then delete the windows.old file, but i put the disc in and run it and then it says where to install it and there is no HDD detected its like i have got the thing plugged in.

 

[Reaver85]

yeah thats what happened to mine it would look as if there is no hard drive in the computer.install dell media direct as that creates the partitions the pc needs then install vista then when it asks where to install you will have a partion called os install it there and ignore the others.thats how i fixed mine but if that doesnt work then i have no idea

 

[Rojer]

I cant install media direct because there is no harddrive, and it already had those partions before.

 

[Reaver85]

you can as its how i fixed mine insert the disc in the computer turn it on and boot from cd (dell media direct disc) it will ask you to create partitions say yes this also wipes the drive (somehow it will see the drive even if computer doesnt) then reboot install the operating system then the dell media direct software.try that if you have the dell media direct disc if not you may be able to download it somewhere if not you may need a new hard drive or use a hard drive fomating software such as gparted live cd, hiren's boot cd to re-format the drive if they can see it.

 

[Rojer]

Didnt fix it the hard drive is F**ked

 

[Leeshez]

Is it an inspiron 5150? I had one of these. The cd drive went. Then the hard drive went. Then it would load and just freeze. So i got shut.