[onesize]

hi guys. i have a sony vaio pcg-7171m (model). i installed windows 7 recently then after some while i did that "system rating" thing. right clicking on "computer" - "properties" - then there's "manufacturer" "model" then "rating" in the "system" section. while doing that power went off, because i didn't have the battery on and the charger got unplugged. i restarted the laptop and a message came up telling me that "operating system not found". so i decided to re-install windows 7. then after a while a message came up telling me that there is no hard disk installed. and press f3 to restart. can you please help me find a solution? thank you.

sony vaio pcg-7171m is the model of the laptop. it has an intel core 2 duo 2.10ghz, 4gb ram, ati radeon graphics card (that i don't remember what model it is, sorry.)

[onesize]

up up

[lunarlander]

It sounds like a Hard Disk error. Is the machine still under warrenty ?

Maybe you can try to re-install Windows again.

[pooveyhead]

Make sure the hard drive is fully seated. There are probably 2-4 screws on the bottom of the laptop that you can unscrew to pop out the hard drive...then pop it back in and make sure it's secure. Turn the PC back on and see what you get.

[onesize]

@lunarlander - the laptop has no more warranty because it only had 2 years warranty. i already tried to re-install windows, and that's the problem, i wasn't able to re-install windows because a message keeps coming out telling me that there is no hard disk installed.

@pooveyhead - i have tried your suggestion, i was able to re-seat the hard disk. and re-tried with the installation. but still the same problem. do i have to install a driver for the hard disk to be recognized at the installation setup of windows? i mean using the f6 thing. although i do not have a usb floppy disk drive. do you happen to know some other way to work with this problem?

thank you for your responses.

[pooveyhead]

Yes, it's possible that your computer needs to install drivers in order to recognize the hard drive. If you find the serial number on the laptop and post back, I may be able to help point you to the correct drivers. You could also try looking it up yourself here: http://esupport.sony.com/US/p/select...IRECTOR=DRIVER

[mhd1360]

Go to Bios Setup by pressing F2 or F3 (depending to your laptop model) and see if it could detect your HDD.
If so , your HDD is alive yet and there should be a software problem but if you couldn't see any information in BIOS about HDD, your Hard Drive is gone.

[onesize]

Originally Posted by pooveyhead

Yes, it's possible that your computer needs to install drivers in order to recognize the hard drive. If you find the serial number on the laptop and post back, I may be able to help point you to the correct drivers. You could also try looking it up yourself here: http://esupport.sony.com/US/p/select...IRECTOR=DRIVER

"vgn-nw11s" here's the serial number. hope you could find the right driver for this. thank you.

Originally Posted by mhd1360

Go to Bios Setup by pressing F2 or F3 (depending to your laptop model) and see if it could detect your HDD.
If so , your HDD is alive yet and there should be a software problem but if you couldn't see any information in BIOS about HDD, your Hard Drive is gone.

in this sony vaio, when you enter the bios setup, there are only a few things that can be seen, like the model number, time and date. security settings for if you want to put a password when it boots up. the bios doesn't even have a memory test option or anything else useful.

[pooveyhead]

My best bet would be to go here: http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/pro...W11S_S/updates

Open up the Pre-installed Drivers and Utilities 'Windows Vista' section (I know you're running Windows 7, but a HDD driver like this one should be OS independent). In this list, there's a driver called 'SATA Driver Intel (Non-RAID)' from 27/10/2008. Download this on to a flash drive, put the flash drive into a USB slot in your computer and attempt the Windows installation again. When Windows tells you to install hard drive drivers, point to this file on your flash drive.

If this doesn't work, it's possible that your hard drive is completely dead. If I were you, I would either put it into another computer (if available) and see if you get different results or buy a cable similar to this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA0U009E8211.

This kind of cable will allow you to attach internal hard drives to other computers via USB; great for checking whether the hard drive is dead. If the hard drive still works, the second computer should recognize it and possibly give it a drive letter (g:, f: etc). If the second computer doesn't recognize the drive at all, buy a new hard drive.

Best of luck.

[onesize]

Originally Posted by pooveyhead

My best bet would be to go here: http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/pro...W11S_S/updates

Open up the Pre-installed Drivers and Utilities 'Windows Vista' section (I know you're running Windows 7, but a HDD driver like this one should be OS independent). In this list, there's a driver called 'SATA Driver Intel (Non-RAID)' from 27/10/2008. Download this on to a flash drive, put the flash drive into a USB slot in your computer and attempt the Windows installation again. When Windows tells you to install hard drive drivers, point to this file on your flash drive.

If this doesn't work, it's possible that your hard drive is completely dead. If I were you, I would either put it into another computer (if available) and see if you get different results or buy a cable similar to this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA0U009E8211.

This kind of cable will allow you to attach internal hard drives to other computers via USB; great for checking whether the hard drive is dead. If the hard drive still works, the second computer should recognize it and possibly give it a drive letter (g:, f: etc). If the second computer doesn't recognize the drive at all, buy a new hard drive.

Best of luck.

thanks for the tip and i will surely try that as soon as i can. anyway, when i download this file, should i unzip the archive and put the files from the extracted folder to a flash drive or should i just put the zip archive inside the flash drive and the setup will recognize it automatically?

[pooveyhead]

Unzip first. If this doesn't work or it's not obvious which file within the archive should be selected, try just copying the whole zip file to the flash drive as well and select the whole zip file when prompted by Windows. You might find additional help in this forum: http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-...install-2.html