[RickJ]

Parents laptop (Compaq Presario 3000) HD went south. Installed new HD but their restore disks are not working. Getting a variety of errors.

... so now I'm trying a real windowsXP Disk.

... Booted with it in, and it seemed to be setting some things up, then I get this message:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program.

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3"

Is it saying that cause I'm using a real windows disk? What options do I have at this point?

Thanks!

[RickJ]

PS. I rebooted to try again. It got further this time. Odd. I'll see if it will finish...

[Curlyben]

Did you check your BIOS set up before you started as it may be picking it up incorrectly?

[RickJ]

!@#$

This time it got to the format part. I chose format NTFS and it got to the end then this message:

"Setup was unable to formate drive C. The hard disk may be damaged. Make sure the disk is on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated. See your computer or SCSI adapter documentation for more information.

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3."

It's a brand new HD. Is all this grief because I'm using a real Windows disk on a Compaq computer that wants to be setup with restore disks?

[TheSavage]

The windoze disk would still install - I never use the compac reinstall disks [9 of them lol], Too much crap to clean out of PC with them- Sounds like you might have your jumpers wrong on the hd -[or a faulty hd]- Savage

[RickJ]

Did you check your BIOS set up before you started as it may be picking it up incorrectly?

What should I look for in BIOS?

[Curlyben]

Hard drive information.
Make sure it matches what you have installed

[RickJ]

Aah, OK. I'll check it out.

[RickJ]

I tried again this time formatting the partition where my dad already got partway through the setup using his restore disks... so it formatted that partition then started with the setup...

But now it says Setup cannot copy the file dbghelp.dll.

I have the option of quitting or going on without it.

Do I need that file?

[Curlyben]

Sounds to me that you have a nice DOA.
Have you made sure all the connections are secure and free of muck?

[RickJ]

Aah shoot. Forget it. I skipped the file, now it can't copy the next file more.com.

... so off to bios then a retry...

[RickJ]

Sounds to me that you have a nice DOA.
Have you made sure all the connections are secure and free of muck ??

So you're thinking bad hard drive?

[Curlyben]

Yep or a bad connection.

[RickJ]

Sack of piece of junk!

I'm in Bios and under Disks there's a dropdown that says HDD Password. At the bottom it says "Set hard drive password if hard drive support security feature of ATA specification"

that's all it says and I can't select anything or go further to see anything... and the dog-gone drop down is covering what it says next to Primary. Oddly it shows a Secondary master = DW-224E. I have no clue what that is referring to...

[RickJ]

Yep or a bad connection.

For the heck of it, I'll shut down unplug then reseat the HD and try again...

[RickJ]

Ok... same crap. Now, before I go to return this let me say: The HD currently shows as C and D... apparently with windows partially setup on C from when my dad tried with his restore disks.

Is there a way to try to completely format the hard drive as C only and THEN try the setup again?

Is it a matter of booting to C prompt then running format? If so, how do I do that?

[Curlyben]

Part of the XP setup is delete partitions and format.
You can't format an active partition, so c:\ format won't work for you.

[RickJ]

I see. Then off to return the HD and cross me fingers that a bad HD is really what the problem is.

[RickJ]

I hooked the HD up to my PC as a USB drive and successfully formatted it and ran checkdisk on it and there are no problems.

Do you still think bad HD? If so, wouldn't there have been an indicator when formatting it or running checkdisk on it?

Could some other issue on this laptop be causing the problems?

[Curlyben]

OK in that case I'd go with the connections in the laptop itself.
Time for some tinned air, give it a good clean out.