Hard drive trouble

Hey everyone. Got a big problem. I added a new hard drive to my girlfriends computer to help her our with lack of gigabytes. I plug it in, and turn it on, and nothing happens. I take it out, and notice one of the pins was bent!! So i take it out, plug her old HDD in only, and turn it on..... black screen. i get bios screen, then after that, im stuck on a blinking cursor screen!! I tried changing data cables thinking it may have shorted it and nothing... tried windows xp repair from winxp disc and nothing... the BIOS does find the HDD in the auto detect but it doesnt boot it... someone PLEASE help my girlfriend is pissed at me

 

Try swapping the HD cable with a CD Rom Cable. Check bios to determine if the HD is recongized or not. I would also verify my jumper setting are correct on the drive. You could set the jumper to either CS or MS.

Here is another suggestion, on your motherboard there is a jumper for the bios,,,, you can reset the cmos or bios.

 

Sounds like a corrupt boot.ini or MBR file. assuming your running win xp, Boot from the cd and start the recovery console. Once your at the command prompt in the recovery console enter these commands;
fixmbr then press enter
fixboot then press enter

Info about the recovery console
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

 

Try setting BIOS defaults. Make sure there are no bent pins .

 

no bent pins, and the cables i have switched with CD they dont work either. took cables out of a working comp they dont work, so that gets that out of the way. i will try the commands in recovery console and resetting bios. hey to reset i remove jumper and turn computer on?

 

If you are talking about resetting the BIOS, it varies from machine to machine. If you have a CMOS jumper on the board, there is usually a "closed" position that clears the CMOS. Put the jumper there (you may even be able to read where it goes on the board), disconnect all the power, and let it sit a few minutes. Then put it back in the run position.

 

ok so i did the fixboot and fixmbr... its starting up!!! but, the windows xp installation screen is coming up. sure do hope it didnt delete any info. ha. will let you guys know what happens. thanks.

 

You can continue with the installation in order to repair it. There should be a "Repair" option later on in setup, but if it does not appear, don't continue, format, and install a new OS or you will lose everything. Just stop at that point since you will need to restore the registry before trying to run a repair installation.

 

This site has step by step instruction on repairing the win xp installation. This shouldn't cause you to loose any files but it will restore your pc to the original configuration. Meaning your desktop will change and any themes you previously installed will be defaulted to the original win xp theme.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Good Luck!

 

A repair installation leaves the desktop as it was and even leaves the wallpaper the same as it was before the repair. It only affects the Windows system files.