Hard drives not recognized

I left my desktop on last night and just turned the monitor off. This morning when I turned the monitor on it was a black screen and said "No bootable drive could be found". Same thing when I tried to restart.

I have a primary and secondary internal drive installed. When I go into the bios setup it recognizes the 2 - cd/dvd drives but neither of the hard drives. I unplugged / replugged the cables from the drives and motherboard, power cable to the drives. Cables do not seem damaged.

I do not hear the drives spinning on startup. Recover disc will not work because it cannot detect a hard drive.
The computer is an eMachines T3516 running Windows XP.
Where should I look next?

Thanks in advance

Joe

Check your data cables on your hard drives, unplug them and re-plug them. Oxidation build-up between metals can sometimes cause open circuits.

Be sure to plug them back in where they were before you removed them.

See if this fixes the problem.

Edited by MrBruce1959, 10 May 2010 - 08:03 PM.

Older system...I'd connect each drive to a second system (individually) and see if it recognizes them.

My experience is that the BIOS will recognize any drive that's properly connected normally.

I'd replace the CMOS battery (just for GP).

Are these drives on separate IDE cables?

Louis

Thanks for your quick reply but no, I just put a fresh cable on and still the same. The drives are on the same cable. One marked slave the other master. Thanks. I'll pull the drives and check them.

Joe

Edited by xsight, 10 May 2010 - 08:13 PM.

Thanks for your quick reply but no, I just put a fresh cable on and still the same. The drives are on the same cable. One marked slave the other master. Thanks. I'll pull the drives and check them.

Joe

Hmmm? Seems strange that two seperate drives would fail at the same time.

Which is why I asked you about the data (ribbon) cable.

I see you said you also made sure one drive was a slave and the other was a master.

I think we're looking at a problem with your motherboard, to which the ribbon wire is connected. Or have you tried switching the power wires with the cdrom drives to see if the power wire is not the issue here?

OK... the power wire is not the issue, but I'm making some headway here.

If I disconnect the master then the bios recognizes the slave drive but not vice versa. So, I'm gonna see if I can make the slave the master drive and see if it will let me reinstall windows on that drive. Meanwhile I'll check the master on a 2nd system.

Does that make sense?

OK... the power wire is not the issue, but I'm making some headway here.

If I disconnect the master then the bios recognizes the slave drive but not vice versa. So, I'm gonna see if I can make the slave the master drive and see if it will let me reinstall windows on that drive. Meanwhile I'll check the master on a 2nd system.

Does that make sense?

Yes it makes a lot of sense, there can be a problem with the drive you had set as a master, as long as you correctly read the map for the jumper settings correctly.

I know I fell victum of reading the map backwards on a drive once, but that was because it was hard to tell which pins was supposed to be CS MA and SL and then there was a set of dead pins which were there to hold the un-used jumpers.

When I finally tried read the map backwards, the drive worked because the pins on the drive were never marked or numbered and the map did not show that one stand alone pin which was supposed to be the marker pin. So just make sure you did not fall victum to this.

Edited by MrBruce1959, 10 May 2010 - 09:17 PM.

OK... it looks like it's letting me do a reinstall since I removed the master and converted the slave to master. I'm gonna check the other drive on a 2nd system tomorrow.

Thanks so much for your help.

Joe

OK... it looks like it's letting me do a reinstall since I removed the master and converted the slave to master. I'm gonna check the other drive on a 2nd system tomorrow.

Thanks so much for your help.

Joe

Okies I edited my other post above because I felt it didn't make much sense the way it was worded.

And you're welcome!

Good luck with testing that other drive out, again make sure the jumper map is being read correctly.