# C Drive not recognized



## Pavilion (Mar 10, 2002)

I was playing a game and I got the blue screen that said something like Error writting to disk. When I rebooted it said Operating system not found. I restarted with a bootable floppy but the C Drive is not found. In BIOS the Primary Master = [none] and Primary Slave = [none]. The Primary Type is set to [auto] but it does not see anything. I tried the Reset to factory defaults and nothing changed. I thought the drive was dead eventhough the light is still blinking from time to time, so I tried an old 2GB drive and got all the same results. I tried FDISK and the factory recovery CD and still no C drive seen. What am I doing wrong?

Details: HP Pavilion 6460, 400 MHz Celeron, WIN 98
Thanks for any help, Pavilion.


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## Styxx (Sep 8, 2001)

It sounds as if the partition was corrupted either by chance or virus, trojan or variant. Restart with a Startup disk; at the [A] prompt type, fdisk, and strike the Enter key; choose option number 4 to view the partition information. Escape out of fdisk.

If no partitions are shown then you data is gone unless you have made the rescue disks (floppies) that most anti-virus programs recommend you create at or after installation. If you have those made use them. If the HDD just went bad or the mainboard either one then bad code is not an issue. You data should have correctly been backed up to removable media

You can recreate the patrtion(s) using fdisk but doing so erases all data on the HDD.

There is several other variables that the HDD just went bad and is why no partitions are viewable nor CMOS recognises the HDD; The cables became fouled by dust and dirt and just need unplugged and carefully blown out with compressed air and plugged back in; a plug finally worked loose at eith the HDD or mainboard. Always touch the power supply and hold your feet still before touchiong any internal computer components.

Sorry you had trouble. If you had not, in the future:

Backup all your Sensitive Data (Internet Explorer Favorites; Netscape Bookmarks, Address Book and Netscape Mail Folders; Outlook Express Address Books and Folders (compress any Netscape Mail or Outlook Express folders first) letters, pictures, databases, spreadsheets, music, etc.) to removable media for restoring later.

Please see the below attachment.


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## Norwalker (Mar 4, 2002)

I think you need to go back into the BIOS again , and rerun Autodetect. Even though it says "auto" for your primary hard drive, I don't think the BIOS is detecting it. Once you rerun Autodetect, your Primary should have some information about your drive, and it should be able to be at least detected by DOS


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## Webrunner_1 (Mar 10, 2002)

You turn on the computer using a bootable disk was that bootable disk an operating systems disk on, Windows 95/98. 
If when you rebooted it said no operating system was found this should help, regardless of the drive you are using.
For short try loading Windows 98 back on to your computer, You may have tried this your post was not clear.

If the above did not work, I'll need more details
When you turned on the computer with the Pavilion drive in it what did you see on the screen, blue, not blue, was it running POST (the power-on self-test) that a computer does before booting to check the physical health of the computer or set-up or a diagnostic, will it allow you press the DEL(or specified) key to enter set-up, if you do, don't change anything yet, just cancel.
If you have the 2GB drive in still you can check the above info for it, same exact reaction and are you sure?

Sorry for the crazy Qs but the details can tell alot.
Post the details and I'll see if I can be of more assistance.


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