Installed a new WD Caviar into a Dell Dimension 5150 to replace failed Hard Drive. Wont boot on start-up. A cant find drive message comes up. F1 through it and starts up OK. Seems to be recognising the drive in the BIOS menu.

Hi,

Not sure exactly what you have on the back drive or its configuration and capability, but before you can use a new drive, it needs to be partitioned, then formatted probably with the NTFS system before you can copy any files to the drive.

Hopefully, you have the original system CDs or DVDs. You can change the boot sequence to boot from the CD/DVD and proceed from there. To do this, while the PC is early in the process of booting, press the F2 key to enter the setup program. Don't forget to change the boot sequence back when the overall process is complete.

If it won't go past POST then there is a hardware error. Try removing the hard drive and RAM. The mother board should complain at power on giving messages. If it does, try fitting the RAM module by module, then the hard drive.

thegreensx4

It does sound there is a problem with the hard drive. However if you hit F12 at boot you will get an option to run the system diag on the computer. Let me know the error you get and I can tell you where the problem is.

Issken
http://www.fixya.com/users/issken

The "floppy" disk-drive (3.5-inch diskette) on your computer is broken.
Press F1 to ignore the error, and to boot from your C: drive.
Or, press F2 to enter BIOS SETUP, and then navigate through those "setup" screens to tell the computer to "disable floppy seek", or change the setting from "3.5 1.44Mb drive" to "none".
Or, take the computer to a technician, and buy a replacement disk-drive, and get it installed.

I BELIEVE THAT WD PROVIDES A CD WITH "WD DATA LIFEGUARD UTILITIES." IF YOU USE THAT DISK AND SELECT "DRIVE TO DRIVE COPY" SELECTION. THIS SHOULD CREATE A CLONE OF YOUR ORIGIONAL DISK. SELECT THE NEW DRIVE TO BOOT FROM EITHER IN BIOS SETTINGS OR FROM THE BOOT SELECT "F12" OPTION.
THE PC SHOULD BOOT FROM THE NEW DRIVE IF SELECTED

ED P

I would recommend you to change the CPU fan as it may nt be working fine and that should resolve the problem.

Please verify that your jumper settings on the new HD are set to Slave. If not move the jumper to the correct setting and reboot the PC.

you problem is most likely that your bios is out of date. download the latest bios updates for your motherboard and then when you install windows format you HDD with the ntfs system (using the long formatt system not the quick format). Then you should install the bios update. then your mboard shoud no longer have the problem of recognising your large capacity HDD. thanks

Did you check inside and see if all the cables are attached?
Is the hard drive spinning, it may be bad.
Did this just happen?

Put the CD in your CD Drive and shut off the pc. Then start it up again making sure the CD is still in the drive. You will then be asked if you want to boot from CD. Press any key to confirm this (it might skip asking you if it detects that your hard-drive is already blank) Then you want to let it run its install routine. Im not sure what options it will give you but the ones you are looking for is FULL install.