Computer won't start at all with hard drive in it

  • Thread starter Thread starter velvet sea wader
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velvet sea wader

My computer had been working fine. I had another hard drive sitting
around, and didn't know if it was bootable or worked at all, so I
swapped out my current hard drive and put it in. It got past the BIOS
loading screen on my computer and then I got some errors. So I put the
old hard drive back. Now I am in a state where whenever I turn on my
computer, the BIOS loading screen comes up and then just freezes when
the progress bar reaches the end. If I try to enter the BIOS setup by
hitting f2, the computer still freezes at the end of the progress bar
rather than going to the setup screen. The result is exactly the same
with either drive in there, which indicates to me that it is not a
problem with the drive. If I remove the hard drive so I have none, I
can get past the loading screen and boot from a floppy (or go to the
bios setup screen). What could be causing this? I may have
accidentally set the bios to think I have the wrong type of hard drive
since the cat walked across the keyboard while I was in the bios setup
before this started happening. However, if I go now and set the type
to Auto, which it says should work for any IDE drive (my drive is
IDE), this doesn't help. What could be causing this?! Any help very
much appreciated, as for now my computer is unusable.
 
velvet said:
My computer had been working fine. I had another hard drive sitting
around, and didn't know if it was bootable or worked at all, so I
swapped out my current hard drive and put it in. It got past the BIOS
loading screen on my computer and then I got some errors. So I put the
old hard drive back. Now I am in a state where whenever I turn on my
computer, the BIOS loading screen comes up and then just freezes when
the progress bar reaches the end. If I try to enter the BIOS setup by
hitting f2, the computer still freezes at the end of the progress bar
rather than going to the setup screen. The result is exactly the same
with either drive in there, which indicates to me that it is not a
problem with the drive. If I remove the hard drive so I have none, I
can get past the loading screen and boot from a floppy (or go to the
bios setup screen). What could be causing this? I may have
accidentally set the bios to think I have the wrong type of hard drive
since the cat walked across the keyboard while I was in the bios setup
before this started happening. However, if I go now and set the type
to Auto, which it says should work for any IDE drive (my drive is
IDE), this doesn't help. What could be causing this?! Any help very
much appreciated, as for now my computer is unusable.
Click to expand...

There's no way for us to know what settings your cat may have changed.

I'd probably reset the bios. Some have a "Load failsafe" or similar;
others have a motherboard jumper.
 
Did you borrow the jumper from the original drive to set the master/slave
option on the new one?
 
My computer had been working fine. I had another hard drive sitting
around, and didn't know if it was bootable or worked at all, so I
swapped out my current hard drive and put it in. It got past the BIOS
loading screen on my computer and then I got some errors. So I put the
old hard drive back. Now I am in a state where whenever I turn on my
computer, the BIOS loading screen comes up and then just freezes when
the progress bar reaches the end. If I try to enter the BIOS setup by
hitting f2, the computer still freezes at the end of the progress bar
rather than going to the setup screen. The result is exactly the same
with either drive in there, which indicates to me that it is not a
problem with the drive. If I remove the hard drive so I have none, I
can get past the loading screen and boot from a floppy (or go to the
bios setup screen). What could be causing this? I may have
accidentally set the bios to think I have the wrong type of hard drive
since the cat walked across the keyboard while I was in the bios setup
before this started happening. However, if I go now and set the type
to Auto, which it says should work for any IDE drive (my drive is
IDE), this doesn't help. What could be causing this?! Any help very
much appreciated, as for now my computer is unusable.
Click to expand...

Ok, I figured it out. I just wasn't being patient enough, apparently.
After the BIOS screen was "frozen" if I waited long enough, it would
eventually beep and bring up appropriate error messages. It turns out
that it was reading the master hard drive (disk 0) fine, but the slave
(drive 1) had also got set to auto. Since there was no slave drive in
there, it would freeze for a very long time while looking for it. All
is good now. Thanks.
 
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