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Error Message: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system

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  #141  
Old 03-19-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Mar 2008, 2 posts
tyleryoungblood

thank you mate. wanted to boot with a win 2003 svr cd to make a clean install but I couldn't. I even reformated and deleted everything with killdisk but to no avail. rearranged the boot sequence still nothing. Then I tried your simple instructions voila! I got rid of my Vista ultimate finally.

I just love the freedom of having full control of deleting, reformating and reinstalling as I wish.

Thanks again.
  #142  
Old 04-11-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Apr 2008, 1 posts
I am having a similiar problem, but my options are not exactly whats described so far I don't think. I am working on a laptop for a friend. Its a Toshiba Portege. It came with Vista, but he wanted XP Tablet edition. I am getting the same error about not finding a hard drive. My options under system setup and drives are

Built in HDD = Serial ATA Port0
Select Bay = Primary IDE(1F0H/IRQ14)

And the only RAID option I have is

Create State
Built-in HDD =1RAID-0

It has XP PRO now, I installed that before I knew he needed the tablet edition. I installed XP Pro fine, but going to tablet edition I got the error?
  #143  
Old 04-15-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Apr 2008, 5 posts
Thanks Tyler!
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!
Wow! I spent the whole day troubleshooting this problem. I post on this sight and another. nobody new the answer. and then I found this post. Thanks Tyler. you saved me!!! Architecture Student in finals with PC problems!
  #144  
Old 04-15-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Nov 2006, 2 posts
A million thanks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!
I just wasted over an hour on the phone with Dell "tech support" only to find your post when I hung up. I got nowhere with Dell, as usual, and your suggestion worked immediately. I am a happy camper and I thank you!
  #145  
Old 05-06-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: May 2008, 1 posts
Thx
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!
Thanks for the great information! Worked like a charm for me
  #146  
Old 05-11-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: May 2008, 1 posts
thank you Tyleryoungblood
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

thank you so much Tyleryoungblood! Your post helped me get my hard drive working again after the computer had fallen over and got a blank blue screen of death which, after rebooting, caused the disk read error. Nothing I tried would get the disk to be recognized...but your post fixed it! I had an incredibly important file on there that I was able to recover and is now backed up on my web server

Thanks!
Last edited by Bear17; 05-11-2008 at 09:33 PM..
  #147  
Old 07-29-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Jul 2008, 1 posts
Hey Tyler great solutions thanks
yeap definatelly this work for a Compaq presario C500...i went to the Bios setup...and i desabled the SATA feautures in the hard drive...so that was it..and i finally was able to install my new OS....THANKS...!
  #148  
Old 08-06-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Aug 2008, 1 posts
For those of you who are not finding the settings that Tyler described (like me), all you need to do is go into "Drive Configuration." Set SATA RAID to Off and two more options will pop up below it. Set the top one "Master" to Auto. Mine then came up as a mystery drive. Exit setup and save changes. You should now be able to continue your installation. Thank you Tyler, even if your screens are a bit different you put me on the right track to fix my machine. Now maybe I can sell it since I have a far superior laptop now.
  #149  
Old 08-07-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Aug 2008, 2 posts
optiplex gx270
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood View Post
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!
*************************************************************************** *****************************
how do you know when the Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON? And its doing this with a couple hard drives I have and some will install windows then not start. please someone help. im hopfully posting this somewhere someone can help me..
  #150  
Old 09-14-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Sep 2008, 1 posts
--- Life Saver ----->
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood View Post
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!
Just today my wife had bought me a new laptop for my birthday with Windows Vista. I have decided to format the laptop and install XP instead but disaster happened, I got the Error that there was no hard disk. So Vista it is what to do, But when I restarted the Laptop vista was gone!!!!!! My wife was sad because the gift she got me didn’t work and I was kind of sad too.... I went online with my home pc and googled the error. Booooooooooooooom Mr. Tyler Post was an angel shining at me... I tried it and it Woooooorked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I register to say THANK YOU THANK YOU!!
  #151  
Old 09-25-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Sep 2008, 1 posts
Thank you tyleryoungblood
tyleryoungblood thank you very much. May God Bless you i was suffering for three days and try to dig out but not working properly thank you all This is a such nice forum I've ever seen thank you all


Great wort Techspot
  #152  
Old 09-29-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Sep 2008, 2 posts
introduction
hello everyone my name is fred and i fix computers as a side job. thank you
  #153  
Old 09-29-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Sep 2008, 2 posts
Hey there is this hp desktop computer that i'm trying to fix but i keep having this problem with the formatting everytime i keep trying to format the computer i keep getting the error message "setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in you system" i followed the steps that was provided in the last post from everybody and it still doesn't work please can somebody help me with this i tried everything from taking the computer apart and from searching all available options through google. i tried the last thing posted on here about going to the SATA Operation options and i couldn't find it in my system setup maybe it's different from dell to hp. please help Thank You
  #154  
Old 09-29-2008
nickc's Avatar
TechSpot Paladin
  
Location: Friona, Tex, USA
Member since: Jun 2004, 1,594 posts
System specs
pgdup, it would be good if u would make u're own thread.
  #155  
Old 10-05-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Oct 2008, 1 posts
tyleryoungblood you are not a man
[COLOR="Navy"][/COLOR]
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyleryoungblood View Post
I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

[COLOR=Red]Go to "SATA Operation":[/COLOR]

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

[COLOR=Red]CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"[/COLOR]

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

....[COLOR="Orange"][COLOR="Blue"]but a Superman!! [/COLOR][/COLOR]

I was almost sending my laptop back home to India to fix since it costs a ton in London... at such times of credit crunch. But luckily came to your reply and made my Sunday..registered to say thank you. How could you know this secret of universe?
  #156  
Old 12-16-2008
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Dec 2008, 1 posts
ok, so i have a problem with a sony vaio, model VGN-FZ220E, and i had already formatted my computer and installed windows xp, not knowing that i would get the "no hard drive found" message (of doom). i proceeded to by a full copy of windows 98 (not second edition) so i could boot into that and install xp from there. my problem has now become twofold and i need some serious help. the windows 98 boot screen appears, then dumps out to a screen that reports:

"Insufficient memory to initialize windows. Quit one or more memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files, and restart your computer."

my issue is this: if i cant get into windows 98 to change the memory limit to 512 MB and if i cant change my BIOS settings to anything other than what sony had set it to, what are my options in either DOS mode or what can i do to at least get my PC working again? The last thing that i want to consider is having to wait for an XP setup CD from Sony, and having to fill it up with their crap again. Thanks in advance for any information that might help me out
  #157  
Old 01-04-2009
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Jan 2009, 1 posts
I messed with this for so long!! I even went out and bought a cheap sata ePCI card and used that as a work around but following your instructions and BAM! It worked!! Thanks so much!!
  #158  
Old 01-22-2009
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Jan 2009, 1 posts
I had the exact same problem and I did everything Tyler said and it worked except when I went back to the BIOS and changed the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI my computer would not work again. If I leave it on combination, it would not detect my second SATA hard drive. Please help.
  #159  
Old 02-05-2009
macbeth's Avatar
Newcomer, in training
  
Location: Montreal
Member since: Feb 2009, 3 posts
System specs
i have the same issue but with SCSI can anyone help with that im trying to install windows on a server i bought :/ please help its an IntelSE7501WV2SCSI
  #160  
Old 02-25-2009
Newcomer, in training
  
Member since: Feb 2009, 1 posts
Thank You
Thank you very much! I have had this problem once before..I got so sick and tired of having to install vista over windows xp (since the vista install would actually find my hard drive and windows xp couldn't). I almost ordered a new hard drive because I thought the one I had was corrupt. I'm happy I stumbled upon this site! Thank you now XP is running my virtual world!