So about a month ago i bought Onyx old computer and finally got my 1TB hard drive in and RGB cable. I installed the hard drive and loaded up the windows disk only to be shown that (“there is no disk in this drive”) blue screen when trying to find a place to store windows. A friend and I finally got into bios and it did list/register that there is a western digital HD loaded.
To just see what would happen I plugged an external HD and it did recognize the external and would proceed with partitioning, but of course you can’t save Windows XP on a external.
Between a couple friends we have:
-Tried switching sata cables/locations
-Changed power sources
-Checked the hard-drive in another PC (Not D.O.A)
-Removed diff. RAM (heard 3 beeps a few times upon startup)
Im not really that familiar with PC to troubleshoot. Was wondering if anyone had any knowledge on it? I contacted Onyx he said someone on here might be able to guide me in what the issue might be.
EDIT: -
The processor is a liquid cooled Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading, 3.8ghz or 4ghz…
Memory is 2gb.
Video card is an NVIDIA something… with 256mb I think … it might be 512mb.
the hard drive sounds like the SATA drivers are not on the windows cd you are using (could be a aged mobo or hd), you will need a boot disk to load the drivers OR download windows with an updated driver list… or it could be the mobo itself in the computer.
-Removed diff. RAM (heard 3 beeps a few times upon startup) not sure what diff. RAM means but you will need to look into what that error code is and go from there.
Yeah one of the guys at work mentioned it maybe being the motherboard. It had some issues booting as well (had to turn off and on a couple times). When we got into bios it also showed the cpu at 60 degree celsius which seemed rather warm. Onyx i’ll trade ya my new WD 1TB for the working HD that you had in it previously
IS there an option to set the Hard Drive type in the BIOS either to AHCI or SATA or IDE? Test the ram sticks one by one, remember the slots themselves could be bad. You can also run MEMTest on it and see what’s up http://www.memtest.org/. As obvious as it sounds, make sure all connections are secure. Update the BIOS is possible, I know the Sony’s use the Sony Update utility that you’d need to be in windows to run.
<EDIT>
60 deg. C is kinda warm, might want to reapply thermal paste. I’m running at 30deg now.
blue screen is usually memory or software, not safe to assume its memory just from the stop error. Nothing actually says it is ram and it would normally boot from cd if the ram was not working… go to the reg and check if all the ram is showing up.
Im sure its the sata drive issue tho, if you go to your registry try check around there should be something about raid settings or something along the lines of “SATA native mode” make sure its not selected.
cpu at 60 degree celsius is cool 70 is normal…
Sony update is just bloat ware not required for the pc at all.
ProgRocker you are so off plz stop talking… you dont have a clue what your talkign about he cant log into windows forget all the nonsense you are telling him to do that can only be done with the OS installed…
That windows xp disc has no support for sata controllers. Get Windows 7 and that has sata drivers built in as well as most/all the drivers you’ll likely need. Any others you need you should just download from Sony.
---------- Post added at 10:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:29 PM ----------
Agreed on the temp…get you some decent thermal paste and redo that. Check to make sure the fans are all plugged in and working properly to draw air in or blow out depending on where they are in the case.
If the bios sees the drive then your settings should be solid. What mode is the sata set for in the bios?
Ever consider you can boot off something called a cd or maybe a usb flash drive to test ram? He never said boot into windows, he’s a savvy computer guy from what I have seen on here.
---------- Post added at 10:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:34 PM ----------
Pffft. You think that’s possible here considering the level of tech-ness in the posts?
You could slipstream sata controller drivers in a custom cd but Windows 7 is so much better it’s a no brainer to me. Then again I do shit like this daily and have built/fixed computers for 20 years now.
When are you gonna show me how to hack and understand net certifications BTW. I’ll buy the beer. LOL.
Yeah as most of you can tell im not very bright when it comes to PC. I’ve been hooked on my MacBook Pro for 5 years the things bullet proof, never touched it. A friend I have from UB is suppose to get me a copy of windows 7 but i figured onyx gave me the XP disc and I really just wanted to get the thing fired up.
If anyone has solid knowledge that you could find the culprit, and be relatively inexpensive to find the issue (I only paid $50 for this thing lol) i’d be willing to flip some cash.
All my shit is air cooled, no specialness here. Why are you posting old CPUs anyway?
You clearly didn’t read anything I wrote. Memtest is a live CD so as long as the computer can boot to a disc, he can run memtest. Judging by the pictures he can boot to a CD. The only thing that requires windows to be installed was Sony Update, which I mentioned. I’m not sure if Sony allows for the BIOS to be updated via USB or CD. It’s not bloatware, it’s a great utility similar to Toshiba’s service station, HP’s Support Assistant, and Dell’s Support Center. It grabs updates to your PCs drivers and software from Sony rather than manually going and getting each one. If it’s “bloating” your PC, it’s probably time to upgrade.
Get either an XP disc with sata controller drivers or windows 7 first I’d suggest. When does the blue screen of death pop up exactly? It is usually memory or software, though it can be bad media (hard drive or cd) as well. Is the cd scratched at all? Blue screen occurs when booting off cd and in the windows installer or what?
“This utility requires a blank formatted floppy disk.”
From the Sony site.
You can use that floppy driver disk for sata if the computer has floppy. You could potentially put the drivers on a usb flash drive. You could slipstream the drivers into a new custom xp installer disc. There is no single solution really. I still suggest Win 7 myself, installs faster than XP, has tons of drivers built in etc…
Added—
Looking at FS thread it should have a floppy in there. If the floppy works and he has a blank floppy your sony link could do the trick.
This is why I was asking for a list of the bios settings he has, every bios is different and uses different terms to boot. All the new dells seem to come set for raid support here at UB, not sure why. Optiplex 790 and laptops with only 1 drive bay are set to raid, makes no sense. They work with the factory dell image but when you ghost a new image on it won’t boot till you switch to legacy mode. I know this isn’t a dell of course, just a reference point for how important the bios setting can be.
The funniest thing is all the time I spent typing here (5 minutes) I could have had the BIOS set and got the os installing already. LULz
It’s hard to explain which is what makes end user support tough.
