Faulty Hard disk?

NNHMEISINK · Jan 29, 2016

Dear all,

I was trying to use an old laptop of mine with windows xp on it. The first time booting windows was fine, but upon restart all of the sudden I get the message: No operating system found. Because I wanted anyway to reinstall a clean version of windows I managed to load windows xp CD, delete all partitions and format everything. Both in BIOS and windows CD the drive is recognized. After formatting the drive, I wanted to start installing windows, copying files to drive works fine BUT upon rebooting to start the installation from the drive I get a blank screen with a blinking underscore. I tried multiple times and although during windows installation the drive is recognized and there, the installation won't continue.

At this moment I'm at work so I don't have the exact specs of the laptop with me. Just now by heart it's an Asus. Can supply more info later if necessary.

Thanks in advance
Niek

Someone Somewhere · Jan 29, 2016

It sounds vaguely like a failed HDD, but can't say for sure. The BIOS may have an HDD test option; can you try that? May take a while.

I'd strongly suggest not using XP; either use a newer version of Windows, or use Linux.

sancho_mic · Jan 29, 2016

somehow you might have a corrupted MBR, that it's not fixed by wipe clean and reinstall.
i understand that you already wipe clean so no data to take care for backup.

At first, i would try repair MBR from win recovery cd.
It this does not work, i would try (re)creating the partitions with gparted on your current laptop.
At last, I would try the drive in different PC to reformat and install, in order to confirm is installation successful.
-s

SkyNetRising · Jan 29, 2016

Blinking underscore usually means that boot partition is not active.
You will need to go into recovery console from install cd.
Commands will be like:
diskpart
list disk
select disk X (x - number of your hard drive, usually 0)
list partition
select partition Y (y - number of your boot partition, should be 0)
active
exit

D_Know_WD · Jan 29, 2016

Hi there NNHMEISINK,

What is the brand of the HDD? In order to see if the drive is faulty, you can either test it with some brand specific testing tool for DOS mode, or just take it out of the laptop, attach it to another system and test it with one of these: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

I would agree with Someone Somewhere and say that it may be a good idea to consider getting a newer Win version.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

SkyNetRising · Jan 29, 2016

Newer OS automaticaly means increased requirements to hardware.
For comfortable operation Win7 will need minimum 2GB of ram, Win10 will need multicore CPU and minimum 4GB ram.
Unless that old laptop can support that, I would not recomend OS upgrade.

Someone Somewhere · Jan 29, 2016

I would recommend that over using XP. Connected to the internet, it will become part of a botnet and have keyloggers installed basically as soon as you load a web-page.

Minimum requirements of both 7 & 10 for 32-bit OSs is 1GiB RAM, 1GHz one core.

There's also the Linux option, which could easily run faster than XP. Lubuntu would probably be a good pick.

SkyNetRising · Jan 29, 2016

I have tried installing win7/win10 on minimum recomendation hardware.
Computer becomes so slow, it's basically useless.

Someone Somewhere · Jan 29, 2016

Yeah, it's painful. I've got a box with a Via C7 1GHz.

I seem to remember 7 being better than the 10 preview, but that may just be that it was booted rarely, so it always had bucketloads of background updates.

NNHMEISINK · Feb 1, 2016

sancho_mic :

Gparted did the trick!! Deleting and recreating the partitions did it. Afterwards I could install windows xp without any problems
Thanks alot!

Niek

sancho_mic · Feb 1, 2016

glad that it's ok, hope it's not something faulty on hdd/mobo that is corrupting the mbr. or some virus.
Be alert and do backups often till you get confidence...

D_Know_WD · Feb 1, 2016

Yeah, it is great you've sorted this out. Yet, it may be a good idea to test the drive with some of the tools that I've already provided. You should get a SMART report which will show you the overall health status of the drive.
Look for pending/reallocated/uncorrectable sectors.

D_Know_WD

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