• Welcome to Tux Reports: Where Penguins Fly. We hope you find the topics varied, interesting, and worthy of your time. Please become a member and join in the discussions.

Acer travelmate 292LMi does not recognise Hard disk

K

kalten_jm

Flightless Bird
Hello,

After changing the boot order in the setup my travelmate does not recognise the hard disk. It does boot from the CD (UBCD4WIN) but still will not recognise the HD (or USB key)

I think I have to flash the BIOS - there are flashing utilities available for DOS and Windows but I need guidance for that.

Any help would be appreciated
 
J

John Doue

Flightless Bird
undisclosed wrote:
> Hello,
>
> After changing the boot order in the setup my travelmate does not
> recognise the hard disk. It does boot from the CD (UBCD4WIN) but still
> will not recognise the HD (or USB key)
>
> I think I have to flash the BIOS - there are flashing utilities
> available for DOS and Windows but I need guidance for that.
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
>


If your hard disk was recognized properly before you changed the boot
order, it should still be recognized. Flashing the Bios is a last resort
solution, assuming there is a new firware available. I would not do that.

I suggest you reset the Bios to its original configuration (there
certainly is such an option in your bios menu) and see if the hd is this
time recognized. Sometimes, the bios settings can get corrupted and
resetting them to the factory configuration cures that. Once the HD is
recognized, change back the settings to what you want.


--
John Doue
 
K

kalten_jm

Flightless Bird
I resetted to the factory settings and resetted the boot order..
Still nothing - No hard disk
 
J

John Doue

Flightless Bird
On 4/10/2010 5:52 PM, undisclosed wrote:
> I resetted to the factory settings and resetted the boot order..
> Still nothing - No hard disk
>
>

I do not know your machine. If the hard disk can be relatively easily
removed, I would now remove it, and reinsert it. Just in case.

Beyond that, was the disk the original that came with the machine?

Although it would be quite a coincidence, a failure of the disk cannot
be ruled out. If you have or can get your hands on an external usb
enclosure, boot to a dvd-cd, connect the enclosure and see if the disk
works.

--
John Doue
 
B

BillW50

Flightless Bird
John Doue wrote on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:39:29 +0300:
> On 4/10/2010 5:52 PM, undisclosed wrote:
>> I resetted to the factory settings and resetted the boot order..
>> Still nothing - No hard disk
>>
>>

> I do not know your machine. If the hard disk can be relatively easily
> removed, I would now remove it, and reinsert it. Just in case.
>
> Beyond that, was the disk the original that came with the machine?
>
> Although it would be quite a coincidence, a failure of the disk cannot
> be ruled out. If you have or can get your hands on an external usb
> enclosure, boot to a dvd-cd, connect the enclosure and see if the disk
> works.


I would normally agree with you John. But what bothers me is in the
original post they say that the USB key (aka flash drive) can't be seen
by the BIOS either. That doesn't sound good at all to me.

So the BIOS can't see the USB or the hard drive, but can see the optical
drive. Now many BIOS also has a boot menu. On my many Asus and Gateway
computers, hitting the ESC key when the screen first lights up will pop
up the boot menu. There you can select the device you wish to boot from
manually.

The ESC key isn't universal. On my Asus computers, it is the only way to
get there. My Gateways, it is the ESC key or one of the function keys
will work too. I don't recall which other one, F10 or F1 seems to come
to mind. But I would try to get to the boot menu and try that next.

Now when undisclosed says: "but still will not recognise the HD (or USB
key)". Hopefully they are talking about a bootable flash drive. As if
they are not, the BIOS should still see it but get an error that no OS
is found or something if they try to boot from it.

Hopefully undisclosed isn't getting missing OS errors confused with the
BIOS not seeing either of them. As this would be a totally different
problem. Then it would be a missing MBR and/or OS.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)
 
K

kalten_jm

Flightless Bird
Hello,

I took out the hard disk and switched on the machine..
I took out the battery and disconnected the power cord. I then pressed the power-on switch for about a minute...

after re-connecting everything and switching on the BIOS beeped awhile and then was quiet.

Still no hard disk

The reason (i think) why the USB isn't seen is that USB is not in the boot menu (Diskette, HD, CD, and PXE Lan) and there is a switch elsewhere in setup to enable "Legacy USB" ....?????

On POST appears "Press F2 to enter Setup" A switch exists in Setup to enable F12 to show a boot menu. I tried to enable it with no results...

John (kalten_jm)
 
J

John Doue

Flightless Bird
On 4/11/2010 9:21 AM, undisclosed wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I took out the hard disk and switched on the machine..
> I took out the battery and disconnected the power cord. I then pressed
> the power-on switch for about a minute...
>
> after re-connecting everything and switching on the BIOS beeped awhile
> and then was quiet.
>
> Still no hard disk
>
> The reason (i think) why the USB isn't seen is that USB is not in the
> boot menu (Diskette, HD, CD, and PXE Lan) and there is a switch
> elsewhere in setup to enable "Legacy USB" ....?????
>
> On POST appears "Press F2 to enter Setup" A switch exists in Setup to
> enable F12 to show a boot menu. I tried to enable it with no results...
>
> John (kalten_jm)
>
>

Your post does not say if you put the hd in a USB enclosure. I assume
you did but assuming ...

I did not intend to suggest you try booting from the hd in a usb
enclosure but that you boot from a bootable cd and see if you can access
the hd. If you cannot, it does not necessarily mean the hd is bad, since
it depends if a usb driver is loaded when you boot from the cd/dvd
media. Ideally, take your hd in the enclosure to a friend/neighbor's
machine and see if the hd can be read. Then, you know for sure.

You mention that the Bios beep awhile ...? if it beeped more than once,
that is an error message and you muss precisely note the sequence so
that if can be identified.

--
John Doue
 
B

Bob Villa

Flightless Bird
On Apr 10, 5:14 am, undisclosed wrote:
> Hello,
>
> After changing the boot order in the setup my travelmate does not
> recognise the hard disk. It does boot from the CD (UBCD4WIN) but still
> will not recognise the HD (or USB key)
>
> I think I have to flash the BIOS - there are flashing utilities
> available for DOS and Windows but I need guidance for that.
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
> --
> kalten_jm


So, would this be an IDE CD drive and an SATA HDD? Could you have
issues with serial drivers? Just a thought!

bob
 
K

kalten_jm

Flightless Bird
Hello,

I tried various things and came out with these answers:

- the disk is correctly recognised in POST as IDE drive. I obtained another disk and it was also correctly recognised in POST

- Setup does not recognise either hard disk -it says "No HD"

I tried out UBCD (DOS version). It is full of utilities . One of them:- Hitachi fitness test recognised the HD as:
No. 00 ATA (!!!) primary master IC25N060ATMR04
It also listed the CD drive as:
No. 01 ATAPI secondary master slimtype DVDRW SDW-4

It analysed the disk correctly but on the Function Test it said "Device is Password protected and can not be tested" Disposition Code 0x22

The Setup has a password setting facility for User and Supervisor but the hard drive lock is greyed out

So that's all I have to contribute - I gladly await your comments
 
B

Bob Villa

Flightless Bird
On Apr 14, 3:30 am, undisclosed wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I tried various things and came out with these answers:
>
> - the disk is correctly recognised in POST as IDE drive. I obtained
> another disk and it was also correctly recognised in POST
>
> - Setup does not recognise either hard disk -it says "No HD"
>
> I tried out UBCD (DOS version). It is full of utilities . One of them:-
> Hitachi fitness test recognised the HD as:
> No. 00 ATA (!!!) primary master IC25N060ATMR04
> It also listed the CD drive as:
> No. 01 ATAPI secondary master slimtype DVDRW SDW-4
>
> It analysed the disk correctly but on the Function Test it said "Device
> is Password protected and can not be tested" Disposition Code 0x22
>
> The Setup has a password setting facility for User and Supervisor but
> the hard drive lock is greyed out
>
> So that's all I have to contribute - I gladly await your comments
>
> --
> kalten_jm


Can you F-disk and reformat and then try recognizing it? (I don't have
a clue about being locked-out!)
 
J

John Doue

Flightless Bird
On 4/14/2010 1:45 PM, Bob Villa wrote:
> On Apr 14, 3:30 am, undisclosed wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I tried various things and came out with these answers:
>>
>> - the disk is correctly recognised in POST as IDE drive. I obtained
>> another disk and it was also correctly recognised in POST
>>
>> - Setup does not recognise either hard disk -it says "No HD"
>>
>> I tried out UBCD (DOS version). It is full of utilities . One of them:-
>> Hitachi fitness test recognised the HD as:
>> No. 00 ATA (!!!) primary master IC25N060ATMR04
>> It also listed the CD drive as:
>> No. 01 ATAPI secondary master slimtype DVDRW SDW-4
>>
>> It analysed the disk correctly but on the Function Test it said "Device
>> is Password protected and can not be tested" Disposition Code 0x22
>>
>> The Setup has a password setting facility for User and Supervisor but
>> the hard drive lock is greyed out
>>
>> So that's all I have to contribute - I gladly await your comments
>>
>> --
>> kalten_jm

>
> Can you F-disk and reformat and then try recognizing it? (I don't have
> a clue about being locked-out!)


I am out of my depth here ... Hope someone will help you ... and me
understand what is happening here.

--
John Doue
 
Top