XP issues with sisters laptop: UNDI Initialize Failled, no Media Detected.

[rabidsheeep]

Hello all, I've got a bit of an issue.

My sister's old laptop seems to have fried, she got a new one so as in accordance to the rules of handy-downs I now get the broken one.

This explanation might be a little long, so thanks in advance for reading it. If anything I might just videotape the startup.

The laptop is an old Dell Inspiron 2650. When I press the power button it turns on, and goes to the Dell welcoming screen, with the option to press F2 to go into BIOS.

Without pressing anything it says:

Initializing MBA, Press cntrl alt B to configure.

Then it goes to a screen that says

Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA) V4.30 (BIOS INTEGRATED)
COPYRIGHT 2000 Lanworks Technologies Co. a sbusidiary of 3Com Corp. All rights reserved...

A few seconds go by and it will say

UNDI Initialize failed, no media detected.
Press a key to continue.

When you press a key...

Operating system not found.

This is where it stops, no responses or anything. Going back to the beginning...

When you press Cntrl + Alt + B

It brings you to a BIOS ish screen with the copyright info, and a bunch of configuration choices. NetWare is the default, RPL, PXE, TCPIP with the other categories being Protocol, Config Message, Message Timeout, Boot Failure Prompt, Boot failure (next boot device)...

I've tried everything I could here and nothing.

Going back to restarting and entering BIOS...

The BIOS seems normal, PhoenixBios Setup Utility, all the stuff is there and recognized except for the Hard drive.

I've tried pretty much everything I can think of, booting off a boot floppy, XP CD, fiddling with the settings of whatever pops up, opening it up and cleaning out the physical connections...

What I think it comes down to is just that the hard drive is somehow screwed beyond repair. To test this I was thinking of borrowing a friends external hard drive and booting off that, but I'm not sure if that will actually work.

Anyone have any suggestions? If not, would it be smart to just buy a new hard drive (I don't care about the data on it right now) or is there something that could be related to another component, which would make a new hard drive useless.

Hope this whole thing was comprehensible, thanks in advance.

[ktkendall]

Does booting from a floppy and or the XP cdrom work?? It should if the only problem is a fried harddrive, assuming the laptop is set to boot from floppy and or cdrom in the BIOS. Your friends external drive will not work cause it does not have a copy of windows loaded with the divers that are needed for your laptop.

[rabidsheeep]

Booting from anything gets to the point where it should recognize the hardrive, then stops.

I tried reformatting it completely and repairing it from an XP cd and it failed when the drive was not recognized.

[glc]

Replace the hard drive.

[rabidsheeep]

Thought it would be necessary. From what I can read off the hard drive label, its a 20gig ATA/IDE 4200 rpm hardrive, pretty old.

I've got no idea what to look for for a notebook hard drive, but just from searching on newegg, this would be what I'd be going for correct?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144374

No need to keep the speed down at 4200 right?

[glc]

The laptop may have a 32gb bios limit. You are safer with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152047

[rabidsheeep]

Thanks glc!