Hard Drive not recognised - can you help?

[Noelb]

The PC my son uses is a Pentium 2 and has stopped working. Generally it will not recognise that it has a hard drive fitted. This seems to be irregular as it would not recognise its original hard drive apart from once when the PC was turned off (as opposed ro a re-boot). When it did recognise the drive, Windows 2000 started to load but didn't get any further than the screen where the progress indicator travels across the box. It then remains in that state until re-started and the process is possibly repeated but generally the PC will not recognise the drive. I was away when this problem started and my son tells me it happened numerous times. Now it generally will not recognise the Hard drive at all.

I installed a drive from an even older machine with Win 98 installed. This drive allowed the machine to load up. I then removed this drive and tried to install a drive from a third machine but again the Pentium 2 would not recognise that it even had a hard drive installed, much less allow it to work as it should.

I suspect that there is something wrong with the original Pentium 2 hard drive as it wouldn't work in another machine so I am quite happy to beat it flat with a large hammer and throw it away.

My real concern is getting the machine to recognise any hard drive properly.

I have the Bios set to auto detect the hard drives drives, I have set it to also seek the CD rom, floppy and HDD in that order to attempt to boot from anything but it seems to ignore everything after it looks for the hard drives.

Is anyone there able to give me a clue as to how I might resolve this problem please?

Cheers


Noelb

[Stryker]

Hiya Noelb... welcome to PC Mech!
The first thing I would check is the "jumper" on the back of the drive. There should be 8 small pins (look like this ::::) on the drive with a small plastic piece pushed onto them somewhere. This small plastic piece connects two of the pins and tells the system how to detect the drive. What you want to do... assuming this is your only drive on that cable, is set that jumper to detect the drive as MASTER. You may be lucky enough to have the postitions indicated right on the drive, otherwise you can do a google search for your drive and probably find it on the WWW somewhere.
GOOD LUCK!
Stryker

[flanzig1]

If you use a new or used HDD, you will need to format the drive. Put in a new drive and put your Win2k disc in the CD drive and start a new install. Win2k should ask to format the new drive. The biggest concern is if you have all the drivers for the different components in that old machine.

[regans cortina]

Does sound like the drive is shot. Problem is if you get a new one , most older systems cant take a larger hard drive without a bios update. So you may end up having to get a 20gb drive unless you can find a bios update for your system. If you know the make & model of your machine, go to the manufacturers home page, that should help you in making a decision. If not , come back and we,l try and help you further.

[Noelb]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Sorry for not replying sooner but I find that work keeps getting in the way of my life.

Cheers

nb