HI all,
Sorry, I don't post very often but I've got a problem and I sure could use some input.
I working on a Compaq Presario S4120WM. The only specs I know for sure since it won't boot is it has a P4 CPU, 512 MB of RAM and a 40 GB hdd with Win XP Home. Aside from a HIS Radeon X1650 Pro Video card and a LiteOn DVD burner, it's pretty much stock from the factory. (HP, unlike Dell, is not very forthcoming in listing the factory specs)
To the problem, the hard drive has failed diagnostics but still is good enough that I can image it to a new drive however, it won't boot to Windows. It gets to the desktop and then reboots. My master plan was to image the drive then do a repair install on the new drive to correct any corrupted XP files.
When I boot to Acronis and try to clone the drive, it tells me only one drive is installed. So I went to BIOS and sure enough, the new drive isn't there. But BIOS will recognize the original drive. Here are the steps I've taken so far, none of which have solved the problem:
- Tried clearing CMOS although since this board has no battery and no obvious CMOS jumper I had to guess as to which jumper it was. There is a jumper labelled "FSB" near the primary IDE port which is the only one on the board that resembles a CMOS jumper. So I tried that. Seemed to work but still no new HDD
-Tried auto-detecting HDDs but only orginal showed up
-Tried resetting CMOS defaults
-Tried jumpering the new drive to Master instead of cable select and booting only with it on the Master cable
-Tried the new drive on the Secondary IDE channel as both master and slave
-Tried 4 other known good "shop" drives
Am I missing something really obvious? I'm sitting here scratching my head and trying to think of anything else to try.
Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions!
Jack