No boot device detected: system halted

[nna528]

Hi, I posted this message to a thread someone else posted having an issue with, but it was rather old so I'm reposting new, and also updating some other things I had an idea about and tried.

Here is the original post:
Looking to see if anyone can offer any advice or suggestions, I'm not an expert but I'm pretty knowledgable and have been able to diagnose, repair, and fix most of my computer's problems.

First off, this system is a few years old but taken care of Dell Dimension 4400.
1.7gb proc
512mb ram
Maxtor 40gb hard drive

My computer had been working fine and well, and I had sat it aside while I was hooking up another computer to do some things to it. When I reconnected it I came up with the error listed in this thread "No boot device detected: system halted" ... I've looked up several things on it and tried some things, I've checked all my cables and connections, checked my ram, and such. I just don't understand what else it could be, perhaps my motherboard or some component I'm not well versed in yet. I also connected a spare harddrive to it that I know worked and it gave me the same message... took it out and reconnected back to working computer and it worked fine again. However, when I take the harddrive out of the dimension and hook it to the working computer it gives me a, I can't quite remember the message now, but something similar to 'disk error' or 'error reading disk'. I'm not sure what to do from here and just thought I'd ask for any other advice.

Since..... I have created a seatools for dos diagnostic ... at first it came up several times that no hard drive detected, so I took and swapped the power cable, and rebooted. This time it worked brought up the harddrive, it failed SMART scan, passed short scan, and so on. But it was saying the temp was high, like 84. This is another problem in itself but I'm going to come back to that in a second. I ran seatools again, and now it's saying the same thing that the hard drive isn't detected.

Coming back to the temperature issue. A few months back the fan quit working and I replaced it. The connector on it doesn't fit into the one on the motherboard but I found a cable that was an adapter for the plug fit that it had. So, at this point the fan worked and went fine. The inital msg saying 'processor fan not detected' I thought would come up anyway since it's not plugged directly into the motherboard like it used to be. This may or may not be the case, I'm unsure, but I suspect now that I've gotten the fan powered up again it will remain able to cool. I just wanted to throw this information out that for that bit of background.

I suppose this sums up my novel for now. I would really like to get this back going cause I never had any problems with it and its always been a pretty little stable computer for basic stuff. Any suggestions, ideas, thought, guesses, anything would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Natalie

[kilgoretrout]

Your hard drive is dead or dying. You will have to replace it and reinstall windows.

[kissfan]

Not wanting to rain on the previous posters party, but I think this is a MB issue.

You have tried a second known good HDD and still get the same error. To me this indicates either the connection on the board has gone or possibly that you have a psu issue, but the latter I think is not really likely, at this stage.

Can you slave the problematic HDD into another system to see if the drive is recognised and accessible.

If it is then I stand by my initial thinking and we have a fault on the MB.

Kissfan

EDIT: Sorry just re-read your post, it could be the HDD. (missed a chunk of your text )

[Cricket]

Try replacing the IDE or SATA cables with new ones.

Cricket

[nna528]

Okay am in the process of trying some of these things... I did take a good hdd and put in and it finally recognized it (IBM Deskstar 40gb hdd) and I tried to begin installing windows, so far, twice it gets stuck at 88% for hours...

[nna528]

In regards to my last post, is there any reason windows won't install when I tried to do a regular install (the one that takes longer) opossed to the (Quick) install... because I went ahead and tried the 'Quick' install and it seems to be working and everything going ok. Just don't know if in the long run if there is something wrong with the hdd that will mess things up or be corrupted since in the longer install it got stuck at 88%.

[glc]

There may be a problem with that IBM hard drive - go to www.hgst.com and download Drive Fitness Test to do diagnostics. You can also boot with your Dell Resource CD and run hard drive diagnostics.

[nna528]

Okay I did the diagnostics and this is the failure I got.

"The failing return code 0x72 represents a S.M.A.R.T. error. The S.M.A.R.T. system is a disk
drive’s way of notifying of possible failure in the future"

Since it doesn't have to do with a media defect, does this mean the I might as well get a new hdd?

Oh, and I also ran Seatools again for the original hdd that initially got the 'no boot device detected error' and this time is has passed SMART, short, and long testing. However, it does say "POH 32214 current temp 83 worst temp 78" .. which has fluctuated and is now at 79.

I swear, like I wish these things would make up their minds whether they're going to work or not...


EDIT & FINAL UPDATE
Found a hdd that passed everything so i'm going to go with it... thanks to everyone for their suggestions, i looked into everything said and it has helped me tremendously.
thanks!!!!!!!