compaq Armada 7730MT wont accept Hard drive

my old Compaq armada 7730mt notebook wont accept any HDD it was working well with win200Sp3 on it till my friend borrowed it he came back some few days later,but the laptop won't bootup, it would startup and say enter command path e.g C:/COMMAND.COM.
I tried to format it having using a WIN98 startup floppy,but at 100% the formats stops and "unable to create boot sector" massage shows up, i changed the HDD but still gets the same problem.
I'm in a fix now,any one with a solution please help
Thanks Phill.

Hi

Look in the BIOS for any kind of virus protection, if its turned on it prevents anything from writing to the boot sector of any hard drive installed.

Regards

hi,
thanks but i cant get to the bios,compaq says the bios was on the 1st installed HDD,so i guess i lost that when the first HDD crashed and i put the one that is having this problem now,please any other solution?

Hi

Go here, its listed as
DESCRIPTION: Creates a ROMpaq diskette to upgrade the System ROM.

Might be what you need

Regards

thanks, i tried that,the upgrade was successful but the problem still persist,any other solution?
regards

you cannot "borrow" a bootable hard drive from one system or motherboard and use it on another. Windows configures itself for each system and motherboard by serial number.

The bios is not located on the hard drive. It is located in a chip on the motherboard. Are you sure you are pressing the right key on bootup? F2? F10?

Of course Tedster you can't place a hard drive with an OS installed in another computer and expect it to boot, but he has said that he has also tried a freshly formatted drive with the same "no go" results

thanks all,
i'm still stuck with the problem though,when i try to format the HDD on the laptop,the format starts, when it gets to 100% i get "FORMAT COMPLATE:CANNNOT CREATE BOOT SECTOR" and it stops there.some one suggested the HDD controller is bad,i'm trying to get another board to see if it will work,the HDD id controller is on the mainboard.

It is rare that the hard drive controllers in both desktops and laptops go bad, but it does happen. I am more concerned that you can't access the bios. This could be caused by a bad CMOS battery or a bad motherboard also