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Bios not recognizing hard drive on hard boot?

post #1 of 22
12/27/05 at 10:02pm
Thread Starter 
Just recently upgraded my 9300 to the 7800gtx and 2gb of corsair memory, everything works fine , I have the 9 cell battery and the 130w power supply. I tried starting up the laptop from a cold boot and it said the their was no hard drive to boot off of and it said that there was no hard drive in the bios? I changed the post process from minimal to thorough and it worked but I would like to know why the minimal or auto mode doesn't work. thanks
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post #2 of 22
12/27/05 at 11:11pm
Change anything in relation to your hard drive when you opened your laptop? What's your boot sequence like?
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post #3 of 22
12/28/05 at 12:32am
Thread Starter 
The boot sequence is the dvd-rw is first then the hard drive. Don't understand why this would happen, other than maybe its becasue of the flashed bios? When you guys boot up do you see the bios version and the model of your laptop displayed over the progress bar? I don't, I think your supposed to though, but I don't think its the cause of my problem. thanks
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post #4 of 22
12/28/05 at 3:40am
Try reverting back to original BIOS and reflashing?
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post #5 of 22
12/28/05 at 4:21am
I have had the same problem ever since I flashed my 9300 with the XPS2 A05 BIOS. I get a "no bootable devices found - press F1 to rety or F2 to enter setup" message.

The computer will usually boot after I turn it off and then on again though.

I havent not touched anything except the video card (I swapped my 6800 for a 7800) and I did not change any BIOS settings. I will try changing the boot speed from minimal to thorough, though.
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post #6 of 22
12/28/05 at 12:50pm
Thread Starter 
Gonna try and revert back to the original bios but I am not expecting it to fix the problem because I think its the cracked bios itself that's messed up, I think. Anyone know where I could pick up a better cracked bios? I'll try to revert back to the I9300 bios for the hell of it and maybe it will fix itself, (praying to god ). After that I'm kind of out of ideas on how to fix this problem exept maybe to buy a new hard drive; always wanted a 7200rpm. Any suggestions on the best 7200. thanks
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post #7 of 22
12/28/05 at 1:29pm
mine does same thing, very annoying

cracked bios simply allows you to flash it, then when you update to A05 your getting orig dell XPS bios, so thats not the problem

just out of curiosity, do you have a sata drive?

hitachi perhaps?
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post #8 of 22
12/28/05 at 1:36pm
Thread Starter 
yes sata drive, I think they come standard for all the new 9300's anyway, I did flash the bios and im running an original 9300 bios with the new 7800gtx and windows recognizes it. I have no problems booting, just in the bios it says it doesn't recognize the name of the video card? Should I leave it the way it is? Is it safe? Anyway I'm going to try to mod the bios itself so it does read the video card.
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post #9 of 22
12/28/05 at 2:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevlarman
I have had the same problem ever since I flashed my 9300 with the XPS2 A05 BIOS. I get a "no bootable devices found - press F1 to rety or F2 to enter setup" message.

The computer will usually boot after I turn it off and then on again though.

I havent not touched anything except the video card (I swapped my 6800 for a 7800) and I did not change any BIOS settings. I will try changing the boot speed from minimal to thorough, though.
Same issue here with my XPS2. Everything worked fine until I upsized from a 60gb to 100gb 7200rpm drive. Cold booting works fine most of the time, however warm reboots always hang. Powering down followed by a cold boot fixes the problem. Interesting thing is that the problem continues to happen even when I revert to the original 60gb 7200rpm drive. I haven't tried stepping down to a pre-A05 BIOS yet but might give that a try this evening.
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post #10 of 22
12/28/05 at 2:13pm
Saleensr451, are you still able to run the 7800 at full speed even with the 9300 A05 BIOS?

I neglected to test my laptop while I still had the BIOS installed. Oops.

And I have a SATA drive as well.
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post #11 of 22
12/28/05 at 2:52pm
answer is no, need XPS2 bios to take it out of low power mode, otherwise you'll get around 5k 3dmark05
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post #12 of 22
12/28/05 at 3:44pm
Thread Starter 
yes OmniSoulz is right and I saw it for myself, ran 9300 bios and got 3dmark of 5k and now im running the xps bios and I got 7500, so going back to the 9300 bios is not a wise decision, but the original problem is still at hand, and some suggestions would be helpful. Actually editing the bios files itself?
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post #13 of 22
12/28/05 at 4:05pm
Did you try switching the boot speed from mimimal to thorough?
Booting does take a bit longer, but it hasn't failed to recognize the HDD yet.
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post #14 of 22
12/28/05 at 4:26pm
thats the easiest fix i have found

im just curious if it is only affecting SATA drives

and im even more curious if the motherboards are just using a PATA to SATA adapter
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post #15 of 22
12/28/05 at 4:40pm
Thread Starter 
yeah thorough mode works, just wondering about the minimal mode.
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post #16 of 22
12/28/05 at 4:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by OmniSoulz
and im even more curious if the motherboards are just using a PATA to SATA adapter
When I opened up my lappy to install the 7800, I didn't notice a bridge connector on the mobo; actually, the hard drive SATA connector was buried underneath the PCMCIA slot, and I didn't want to dismantle it just to take a peek.

I suppose there could be some sort of physical SATA -> PATA converter, but wouldn't it affect the overall length of the connector and drive? I'm assuming there's just a bridge chip on the mobo itself, because even though I have a SATA HDD, it shows up in device manager as a normal IDE drive.
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post #17 of 22
12/28/05 at 5:31pm
Thread Starter 
hmm you think it would affect the boot process, I mean either one should work just fine. Would a PATA to SATA converter have anything to do with the process? My assumption is that maybe the hard drive is to slow for my computer (very long shot) but its the only thing I can think of until I get a new hard drive (7200) and also planning on getting the SB zs
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post #18 of 22
12/28/05 at 5:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saleensr451
hmm you think it would affect the boot process, I mean either one should work just fine. Would a PATA to SATA converter have anything to do with the process? My assumption is that maybe the hard drive is to slow for my computer (very long shot) but its the only thing I can think of until I get a new hard drive (7200) and also planning on getting the SB zs
You got me. I just know that my 9300 never failed to boot when I had the A05 9300 BIOS. I don't know enough about the BIOS to try and edit it either.

I just noticed your sig; how'd you get the gigabit ethernet on your 9300?
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post #19 of 22
12/28/05 at 5:40pm
Didnt read through the whole thread, but update your XPS2 BIOS to A04 or A05 and it should recognize SATA I believe.
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post #20 of 22
12/28/05 at 5:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saleensr451
My assumption is that maybe the hard drive is to slow for my computer (very long shot) but its the only thing I can think of until I get a new hard drive (7200) and also planning on getting the SB zs
I don't think this can even happen.
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