Bought used laptop which only recognizes the HDD that it came with even after resetting bios by removing CMOS-battery

N

NotTooBrightGuy9

Laptop: Asus P52F i5

Basically title. Even after resetting bios it looks alright at first but doesn't recognize any bootable devices ssds, hdds, and ubuntu usb.

I did some googling but couldn't find any useful information on how to completely wipe whatever there is.

Could you please recommend what else can be done? Or did I **** up and now have to buy a new motherboard and HDD/SSD entirely?
 
Your title says it recognises the hard drive it came with so work from that. Try to get that drive to boot. You could contact the seller and ask if it has Windows installed and if they can say whether it has any known issues. It’s not a great idea to rush out buying replacement motherboards and hard drives when you don’t know what you are doing.
 
bazz2004 said:
Your title says it recognises the hard drive it came with so work from that. Try to get that drive to boot. You could contact the seller and ask if it has Windows installed and if they can say whether it has any known issues. It’s not a great idea to rush out buying replacement motherboards and hard drives when you don’t know what you are doing.
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I can boot only the hdd that it has come with and ubuntu usb but it doesn't recognize other drives in BIOS. Do you think resoldering a new bios chip could fix this issue?
 
greatverg said:
Hey instead of buying replacement motherboards, you should return it back to your friend and try to buy some other laptop under your budget.
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I don't think I have mentioned that it was my friend nor is this person willing to give me my money back. So I am looking for solutions. It seems that there is a mechanism that has something written in it that only allows seeing the HDD that it came with.
 
If you attempt that it's likely to be a disaster. My guess is that you don't know anything about exploring the BIOS and changing the settings there. Getting BIOS settings wrong can mess up a computer but it's messed up already so google BIOS settings and start experimenting. On the other hand you may have been sold a complete turkey which could turn into a money pit. Either turn this into a project to learn about computers or cut your losses.
 
bazz2004 said:
If you attempt that it's likely to be a disaster. My guess is that you don't know anything about exploring the BIOS and changing the settings there. Getting BIOS settings wrong can mess up a computer but it's messed up already so google BIOS settings and start experimenting. On the other hand you may have been sold a complete turkey which could turn into a money pit. Either turn this into a project to learn about computers or cut your losses.
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I do appreciate your input but your guess is unfortunately wrong. I know that resoldering bios chip is a very delicate process but at this point, I am just trying to salvage mobo. It definitely looks like there was some security measure installed into the firmware/bios on this laptop. Hence, all the troubles. I need the laptop and mobo and hdd for it are not that expensive. I am more interested in cracking whatever security measure was put in place. If you know how to assist with that please do.
 
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My PC has a TPM hardware chip that can secure all data in a business environment but I never considered activating it and worried about that when setting things up. I can't see you managing to sort this unless your user name is a joke and you are really a tech wizard with soldering skills. It would be pretty poor security if it was easy to get round. There are computer workshops that may be able to help. You fail to mention any details of the laptop such as the make and model and which if any OS it last ran. Anybody trying to assist will need to know at least that much detail.
Sorry that I can't be any help.
 
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You don't indicate what type of hard drive it is or the laptop type. I just checked out your laptop, its a standard 2.5inch laptop drive. The new hard drive would not have been initialized. Most hard drive manufacturers supply cloning software in order to install the new drive. Buy an external USB 3 hard drive case from eBay.

The first thing I would do with your laptop in your situation would be to flash the BIOS. Make sure the battery is fully charged and the laptop is connected to the power outlet. Make a bootable USB stick using RUFUS (a free downloadable program) and make a boot USB drive with the new bios onboard. Put the USB stick in the USB port and power up the laptop and continually hit the F12 button. It should go into a boot menu and boot from the flash drive and update the bios. Don't interfere with the process as it will brick the laptop.
You could then install hard drive cloning software and clone your new drive. You may have to go into Windows 7 or 10 and the Control Panel and System and Security. Scroll to the bottom and find Administrative Tools and then go into Create and format Disk Partitions. MAKE SURE YOU CHOOSE THE RIGHT HARD DRIVE. If there is Unallocated space on the second drive you should be able to extend the partition. You can then install the new hard drive and everything should bed ok.
 
What do you mean when you say you reset the bios. Did you reset BIOS defaults or flash the BIOS? A BIOS flash might be order if you did not do that.
 
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