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Windows 7 - Operating System not found and BIOS not detecting HDD

Last response: in Storage
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Hello,
I have HP Pavilion dv9000 series laptop and yesterday it suddenly stopped working (while I was just chatting) and rebooted itself. Upon rebooting, first it stuck at initial screen (BIOS one) for about 2-3 minutes and then showed "Operating System not found".

I checked in BIOS and it seems that it cannot see HDD. In Diagnostics section of BIOS, I tried clicking on Test Primary master but it showed message "No IDE device attached".

My laptop has 2 HDD bays. I tried putting my HDD in second bay and BIOS was able to identify it but still operating system could not be loaded. I guess because this is slave drive bay (I might be wrong though, I am not good at hardware things).

But when HDD is in second bay, I tried booting my laptop using Windows 7 bootable USB drive, and it could see the HDD, but if I put it in first bay and boot using Win7 bootable USB drive, it cannot see the HDD.

Any help/direction would be appreciated. I tried my best looking on google and here too, but most solutions either didn't help or didn't apply in my case.

Thank you.

More about : windows operating system found bios detecting hdd

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Storage Expert

Most likely, either the hard drive is dead or the bay is dead. The first thing that I would suggest that you do is put the drive in the second bay, boot with the USB drive, and backup everything on the hard drive to an external disk so that you don't lose your files.

Laptops are harder to fix than desktops - we can't really suggest that you re-seat the cables. I doubt that it would help, but you might run through this checklist: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02114796.pdf .

From the HP site:
Using a secondary hard drive (select models only)
The computer may be equipped with an optional secondary hard drive bay. This bay may be empty or
occupied by a secondary hard drive.
NOTE Do not install a secondary hard drive unless the computer is configured to support a
secondary hard drive.
A secondary hard drive is designed to store personal files, music, multimedia, or graphics. It is not
configured as a bootable device. On models with a secondary hard drive (drive D), the optical drive
becomes drive E. The next drive added to the system, such as a new USB or digital device, will be
assigned the next available drive letter.

So the second hard drive appears not to be bootable. Someone else may have a better idea than I do, but I would backup my data and OS and send the thing in for repair.
 
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