Member Avatar for tekboi

My HP Pavilion Desktop started acting weird. The screen started distorting ( like bad tv reception). And then started to freeze up and completely crash down. Upon reboot an error message popped up saying "hard-drive failure is imminent, please back up blah blah blah...."

Later, the hard-drive just didn't boot up at all and I got the "No Hard Disk Found" message after trying to restore. I figured the hard-drive must have been bad. So, I went out and bought a new one today (500gb SATA Wester Digital HD), and now it's still saying "no hard disk found". I checked the connections and the new HD is plugged in properly. Could this be a problem with the mother board?

ps. it has an on-board graphics card.

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Member Avatar for techsheaven

Interesting. Does it spin up? If your CD/DVD ROM is SATA, you could try swaping their cables? If the CD still boots, I would focus your attention on the new drive. If not, the controller may be bad (onboard?)

Post back here and let us know what you find out.

Good Luck

Member Avatar for tekboi

Thanks for repsonding techs.

I tried what you My DVD Rom was actually SATA. I tried swapping the cables but to no avail. The computer simply won't recognize the hard drive. The old or the new one.

I definitely think it has something to do with the motherboard.

Member Avatar for techsheaven

IT could be the mobo, but did the DVD drive respond on the other SATA connector? Also, are you using a new SATA cable? What about the old drive with the dvd drives data and power cables? If the DVD drive works, the hard drive should!

Member Avatar for tekboi

Update.


Well, I have a GeForce FX 5200 PCI card that I was using as my primary video card. So, I switched the vga cable to the onboard video card and set the default in the BIOS to the ONBOARD card for the primary.

And now it's looks distorted again. Now, I know for sure it's definitely the motherboard.

Also, I made a mistake in telling you that the DVD-ROM was sata. It was not and there was no way to switch the cables. The only thing I could do was try the addition cables that were already in the unit. They didn't work of course. Looks like i'm either going to have to buy a new motherboard or scrap this piece of garbage and get something new for my mother. Maybe a MAC!! :)

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