Sony Vaio Laptop says Operating System Not Found Upon Boot.

balnce

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Feb 23, 2015
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Sony Vaio Laptop, fixing for a friend. It has had 2 or 3 hdd replacements, so it may be just a faulty hdd again.
The 1000 TB SSHD is listed in the Bios however, which makes me thing maybe it's not faulty. When running Windows 7 boot disc, and trying to reinstall windows it can not find the drive. When I go to the cmd prompt and try bootrec.exe commands they dont work either.
/FixMbr gives me The systen cannot find the path specified.
/FixBoot gives me The systen cannot find the path specified.
/ScanOS
gives me Scanning all disks for Windows installations,
Please wait since this may take a while...
Successfully Scanned Windows Installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 0
The operation completed successfully
/RebuildBCD
gives me Scanning all disks for Windows installations,
Please wait since this may take a while...
Successfully Scanned Windows Installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 0
The operation completed successfully


Model Number: SVe15117fgw

Any help is appreciated, thanks :D
 
Solution
My guess would be that there is a problem with the SATA controller on the board or the SATA/power cable assembly if it has one connecting the motherboard to the drive dock. It's seem unlikely for three hard drives to fail over a relatively short period of time, meaning less than 3-5 years per drive, unless something else is contributing to the failure like poor voltage regulation or frequent drops.

I'd try another drive first, if maybe you can borrow one for testing, and if that fails to be recognized as well then it's likely related to the board or cabling.
Try running Seatools for DOS and see what is reported on the drive health. Run the short drive self test and the long generic. Report back and we can go from there:

(Note: Drive brand is irrelevant. It will work for any brand or drive type.)

Seatools for DOS: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-dos-master/
 

balnce

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Feb 23, 2015
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"No Hard Drives Found,
If you believe this to be incorrect, check cables,
drive power connection and jumper settings.
And then try again.



Test Information and Results:
Scanning for controllers...
No controllers detected
Device scan complete.


I already re-seated the hdd multiple times, to no avail. Any other ideas or is the HDD far gone? If so are there any ideas why all the hdd's are crapping out on this laptop?

Thanks

 
My guess would be that there is a problem with the SATA controller on the board or the SATA/power cable assembly if it has one connecting the motherboard to the drive dock. It's seem unlikely for three hard drives to fail over a relatively short period of time, meaning less than 3-5 years per drive, unless something else is contributing to the failure like poor voltage regulation or frequent drops.

I'd try another drive first, if maybe you can borrow one for testing, and if that fails to be recognized as well then it's likely related to the board or cabling.
 
Solution

balnce

Reputable
Feb 23, 2015
3
0
4,510


Thanks man, loads of help. I'd try use my laptop hdd but its a mission to get to the hard drive, and frankly I'm just a little bit too lazy haha. I'll either strip it for parts and sell them on behalf of the friend or buy a new hdd for 'em.

Thanks again :)