HP dv6700 no other temporary boot option besides HD

[phatbuddha79]

Hello everyone, I hope someone can help me with this really odd problem. I went into the BIOS to make sure that the CDROM and everything else is before the internal HDD, but yet it goes straight to the HDD anyway which is corrupted. I have even tried booting it from a USB CD-ROM drive with a Win7 disk but nothing at all. When I hit the button to look at the temporary boot up options, I only see internal HDD...wtf??? Even though I made sure it is enabled in BIOS but it's like the motherboard refuses to see it. I've even swapped the internal cdrom...what gives?

 

[WR2]

Hello phatbuddha79;


What version of Windows are you working with? Looks like dv6700 could have shipped with XP or Vista.

How do you know the HDD is corrupted? And what are you trying to do?

When you power on press the F12 key and keep tapping at it till you see the Advanced boot menu.

 

[phatbuddha79]

It keeps trying to get into Windows but it won't boot, can't safe mode, can't go back to last good configuration. I'm trying to do a clean install of ANY OS. I've tried Ubuntu, Win7 64-bit, and 32-bit XP. As I said, the fact that it doesn't even see anything bootable besides the internal HDD tells me the BIOS might be corrupted too. Oh well, it wasn't my laptop, I was just hoping it could be fixed.

 

[phatbuddha79]

It also hangs at the POST screen too for a good while like 30 secs. Sometimes it will be quick but more often than not, it will hang there. I've seen symptoms like these at work and it usually means the motherboard is going bad.

Edit: And no, F12 doesn't do anything at all.

 

[WR2]

Try a Live CD boot. That's Ubuntu Desktop booted from a CD.
Try mounting the laptops HDD and see if you can access any personal files that need to be rescued.

What OS did the HDD have installed before you started working?

 

[phatbuddha79]

it looks like someone else tried their hand at it. It currently is trying to boot into Win7. Well, that's the thing I'm trying to tell you. It doesn't have the option to boot into the CD. Most PC's or laptops have the option of bringing up a temp boot menu, when I use it I can only see the HDD as a boot option even though cd-rom and USB boot are all enabled.

 

[phatbuddha79]

Time to give up, I've even made an Ubuntu USB flash drive install and it still doesn't let me boot into it.

 

[phatbuddha79]

I've tried external cd-rom via USB in all 3 ports and still do not see option to boot into it. It goes straight to the internal HDD, thinking more about it, I think I've seen it once but I cannot if it was resolved and how.

 

[WR2]

You might try attaching the laptop HDD to another PC as a secondary drive and installing an OS there. Put the HDD into the laptop and if you get a ugly boot (wrong driver set) you can use the install disk to do a repair install.

 

[phatbuddha79]

Looks like there was a virus that infected the MBR, but it still doesn't make sense to me that the BIOS does not let me boot into the cd-rom or anything else. As far as I know, the MBR resides on the internal hdd correct? I'll update once I find out more what's going on, but it looks like it at least sees the bootable Ubuntu flash drive now.

 

[phatbuddha79]

I got Ubuntu installed via USB flash drive. I can't believe my 8GB flash drive is damaged so I can't put a bootable Win7 installation on there. I'd like to use Win7 as I could probably update/overwrite the possible virus-infected BIOS. It just does not make any sense that it will not boot from internal dvd-rom nor usb dvd rom.

 

[phatbuddha79]

Best answer selected by phatbuddha79.