Laptop Problem Help!

Discussion in 'The Lounge - Off Topic' started by Andrew_P, Jun 27, 2006.

  1. Andrew_P

    Andrew_P Bit Poster

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    Hi All,

    I recently purchased a laptop from my work with only a motherboard inside, I purchase my memory, hard drive and for the life of me its not booting from CD.

    I gone into the bios and it says IDE Secondary disabled but I cant seem to enable it as I cant find a way to get to the bit where it is. Also I can view the contents of the cd with works pre installation already on there but I want to format it and have my own stuff on there so I doubt its the CD Rom drive?.

    The cd's definately bootable as I have used it in the past to install windows.

    Any ideas? :(

    The bios is Insyde Software SCU by the way

    Thanks

    Andrew
     
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  2. Baba O'Riley

    Baba O'Riley Gigabyte Poster

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    Um, maybe it's the jumpers on the CD drive?

    Can you clarify this statement? What is actually on the CD-ROM?
     
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  3. Andrew_P

    Andrew_P Bit Poster

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    Its a Windows XP setup disk I was viewing and all files appeared fine.

    Any suggestions?:)
     
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  4. elli5on

    elli5on Kilobyte Poster

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    You may have to go through the painful process of troubleshooting. Can you get hold of any other components?? Try a different motherboard? CD/DVD Rom drive. No POST erros upon startup etc etc??

    It could be a number of things, elimination process my friend.
     
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  5. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    Is the CD on the secondary IDE? If the CD is a slave on the primary then there might be nothing on the secondary - which is why it is unavailable.

    You need to find the 'boot order' part of the BIOS rather than looking for controller enabling.

    Make and model of this laptop would help some of us to diagnose further.

    Harry.
     
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  6. elli5on

    elli5on Kilobyte Poster

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    Harry, although it may be a slave on primary IDE, would it still not be accessible to boot from??? I would have thought so.

    Maybe he has no jumper settings on the cd rom drive at all(which i know can sometimes set it to slave).

    It would be much better if a faulty componet could politely speak to you when faulty and state... '' I'm f****d''. lol
    Appologies for the kind of swear word.

    Craig
     
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  7. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    Indeed. But in his original post Andrew talks about IDE Secondary disabled, and I would suggest that he really needs to look for the boot order setting.

    Perhaps - laptops can be highly non-standard at times.

    Harry.
     
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  8. Andrew_P

    Andrew_P Bit Poster

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    I have checked the boot order Harry and set the CD-ROM to boot first but no joy :(.
     
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  9. elli5on

    elli5on Kilobyte Poster

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    I would then try alternative components, Otherwise if no joy. Id have to say it is something within the BIOS causing the problem.

    But not 100% sure on that one.

    Craig

    Thought so Harry, i wasn't debating. Merely asking a question :biggrin

    Im not to familiar on laptops anyway. But learning can be so much fun
     
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  10. elli5on

    elli5on Kilobyte Poster

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    It wouldnt have anything to do with administration right s would it??? Probably not if you want to format the C: drive.
     
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  11. Baba O'Riley

    Baba O'Riley Gigabyte Poster

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    Admin rights don't come into it at all as Andrew is having this problem when the PC is first switched on. IE, Before the OS is even loaded.
     
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  12. Boycie
    Honorary Member

    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    So you bought a laptop with only a motherboard inside? Could it be that all salvageable parts have been removed hence it being sold bare?

    Boyce
     
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  13. Baba O'Riley

    Baba O'Riley Gigabyte Poster

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    More likely Boyce is that, like my company, they took out the RAM because of it's value and they take out the hard drives to avoid sensitive data falling into the wrong hands. The only difference here is that we don't have to pay for what's left :twisted: .
     
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  14. Boycie
    Honorary Member

    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    Oh, i got the wrong end of the stick. Do you have the Make and model to hand?
     
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  15. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    If this unit is sufficiently old it may not be able to boot a CD ROM. In which case you have to boot from a floppy.

    Or mount the drive on another machine, make it bootable with FAT, and copy the CD to the drive.

    Harry.
     
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  16. zxspectrum

    zxspectrum Terabyte Poster Forum Leader Gold Member

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    Erm i had this trouble but not with a laptop, it was with a normal pc and ir turned out to be the jumper setting that were wrong. I am taking it that your machine has a cd rom etc and is the disk a full OS or a boot up one ??
     
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