XP wont boot, hard drive not recognized

[peb143]

I have a Dell 700m running XP. Tonight I was streaming a movie online and took down my ad block program to view the video. A little while in firefox froze and I couldn't get it to close (even with ctrl, alt, del). Then I got the blue screen of death. I tried to restart the computer and keep getting the blue screen of death.

When I try to restart in recovery mode I get the blue screen saying to check for viruses on the computer computer. And to run CHKDSK/F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.
Techinical information:
***STOP: 0X0000007B (0xF7BFE524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000.0x00000000)

I tried to boot in safe mode and got the same message but with a slightly different code.
***STOP: 0X0000007B (0xf7b16528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000.0x00000000)

When I tried to run the XP setup disk it stated "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer"


Is there any way I can fix this without losing everything on my hard drive? What do I have to do to get it to recognize the hard drive again? (I read about putting the sata driver on my computer by putting it on a disk and adding it during the boot up process with F6 but I didn't know if this would delete the contents of my hard drive and also I don't know where to find the proper sata driver.) I know a bit about computers but not too much. I would greatly appreciate any help you can provide me. Thanks!

 

[peb143]

I ran the diagnostics pre boot assessment and failed the dst short test with an error code of 1000-0141 "no drive detected".

 

[Archean]

You mean your system's bios is not detecting your hdd as well?

Here is an Microsoft article explaining this error in detail.

Edit:
However, you may try to boot from windows xp setup cd; and run its setup; then choose Repair you windows installation (it will fourth screen, if i remember correctly).

Once you choose repair; you will be presented with license screen, then a table listing installed windows xp along with its partition, press R here.

This should start repair operation; from there on just follow the onscreen instructions; also keep mind you may be asked to enter your windows xp key. You may also keep in mind that windows repair tries to repair while trying to preserve whatever it can (including softwares/registry etc.).

 

[morpheus1021]

If its telling you that there is no hard drive detected then the one you got is bad. If you question this there is one other way to test it. If you have a hard drive in another computer you can hook it up to the computer that has the bad hard drive and just do a power on test. It should boot to the windowsXP or win7 logo. If this is the case then your old hard drive is bad and needs replaced.

 

[peb143]

I put a cheap hard drive I had laying around into my computer and in the setup screen the computer recognizes the new hard drive (it didnt recognize my old hard drive at all). Does this mean its completely dead and there is no way to salvage it?

 

[peb143]

Ok now I put my old hard drive back into the computer and BIOS recognizes it again but it wont boot.

 

[Archean]

Ok now I put my old hard drive back into the computer and BIOS recognizes it again but it wont boot.

You can try to follow xp repair steps i elaborated above; if the process runs its course you should be able to boot from hdd at the end of it.

 

[peb143]

I am running xp home on my laptop. However the resinstallation CD I have is for XP pro. I don't know where I got an xp pro from because I don't have any computers running xp pro. In fact the only computer I purchased from Dell with XP is my laptop. Can I use this to do the repair? I also have a disk called a recovery cd. It doesnt say anything about which operating system it is for it just says "This recovery cd can be used solely for restoring the software originally licensed and preinstalled on your dell system's hard drive and for no other purpose" and has "SI PN 168342.v0" and "p/n w5229A00".

Which disk should I use? Or neither.

 

[Archean]

Well you may try using the cd you have; frankly I have no idea it will work or not; but there is no harm in trying; I am saying this because there is a little hack which one can find by searching bing or google.... which says you can change your xp home to pro with bits of changes; however, doing it without the license of pro is illegal in my view.

Also, if your XP Pro license is legal, you can also do an in place upgrade using Repair function.

The Recovery CD will probably format your hdd; and restore everything on your computer to factory default i.e. in condition it came with.

Anyway; under the shell the OS is the same san some features; so i suspect it may work.

 

[peb143]

this is so frustrating. When I run the reinstallation disk, whether using the recovery console or repair option, it doesnt recognize the hard drive. If I exit setup the computer reboots and BIOS says there is No hard drive. However if I restart the whole computer and enter BIOS, it recognizes the hard drive.

 

[Archean]

You have another working computer at your disposal? (I am assuming from you being here right now)

If it is the case, go to testdisk.org; download testdisk and install it on that working pc; then attach your troubling HDD in that computer and try to fix it using testdisk; if it is able to fix its mbr/boot partition, that will be a good starting point for you.