Compaq Laptop (F558US) - Harddrive problem!!

Ok like most veterans, or experienced computer people, they encounter a lot of "noobs" or new people that are inexperienced like myself.

To start off I've never had much of any problem while using computers or laptops in the past; however, my last laptop I bought is giving me much grief.


The Problem:
My Compaq Presario F558US laptop is having hard drive problems. The initial hard drive it came with is a 100GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3. When i correctly install it and boot it up for my CD recovery set to reinstall the system, it freezes at the end of the installation. Also, When I run my BIOS diagnostic test on it I get this error: "#01-04 FAIL" NOW, I recently bought a 160GB Momentus Seagate 5400.3 HD to replace my current one, hoping the solution would be a quick fix; however, this isn't the case at all. My new HD makes a beep beep tic noise when i install it correctly and boot up. The diagnostic for teh new drive reads "NO IDE DEVICE DETECTED." So now.... I think I need to upgrade the bios so that the new HD will be compatible? Here is the problem though. HOW? I have another pc, in which I could hook up a usb to the hard drive of the desktop, but I have no idea what cable i would need or anything like that. I also can't upgrade anything because I have a faulty hd on my laptop and a hard drive that doesn't get detected....

I'm just guessing as to what i would need to do to fix this, again I don't know much, but i'm not willing to fix this piece of junk if it's going to cost me more and more money....

Any clue/help people?
Any help is GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!

 

According the specs at the Compaq/HP web site here the hard drive is SATA, and not IDE. You didn't mention any specifics about the hard drives so I can't really say if you have the correct drive installed. It should be pretty obvious though if it's the correct interface or not. There's a small chance that the new HD (the 160gb) is DOA. Unlikely, but it's possible. It's also possible that the laptop drive controller has failed. I found no useful downloads at the HP site for Windows XP, but you didn't mention if you're using XP or Vista, so there's not much I can do there either. You can try a couple of things: hook the drive up to a desktop PC (or laptop PC) either by using standard SATA data/power cables and connecting directly to the motherboard as a secondary drive, or use an adapter/enclosure and plug into a USB port. Then format the drive NTFS and run some diagnostics on it to make sure it's 100% healthy, then pop it back in the laptop. If the laptop still gives errors after that, then you either have a bad BIOS setting, or a bad drive controller. Try using the BIOS defaults (usually pressing F9 will install factory fail-safe default values).

 

The thing is... I've tried varying up serveral other things.

I have an XP SP2 home edition on the older hard drive, which i can pop in and start the process of installation. It says the old hard drive is oddly partitioned into 3 separate factors. One of which is 65gbs and is totally corrupted; however, the other two small sections still work.

When I try to install XP on the new hard drive, the hard drive just makes a tic tic beep/scratch noise, and constantly restarts the laptop. This is particularly frustrating....

I'll install xp on a portion of the bad HD and see if it boots up... maybe from there i can reformat the old hard drive partition that's corrupted.

What's more mind boggling is the new HD and why it won't recognize it...

My recovery cd's are Vista and vista is what I want/have been using for the past few months.

I was thinking my "new HD" as advertised may in fact be DOA. After all, it turned up to be refurbished..... no thanks to false advertisement.

I did a lot of research on the HD to make sure it had all the specs of the Seagat Momentus 5400.3 100gb one, so they are identical in size, shape, etc...

 

I think it's safe to say the "new" drive is indeed DOA. Even with it being factory refurbished, it should still have a warranty and should be replaced for free. You may be able to save the old drive. Use a low level wiping utility like Darik's Boot-And-Nuke or the utility from the manufacturer. If you perform a low level 'zeroing' of the drive, that can repair some corruption problems as it will remove all partitions and write "00" across the entire drive. It takes time so start it before going to bed. After the drive has been completely wiped or 'zeroed', boot to your XP disc and try to install Windows. I bet it will work! Here's some links:
Darik's Boot-And-Nuke http://majorgeeks.com/Dariks_Boot_and_Nuke_d4596.html
Partiton Logic (use it to remove partitions) http://majorgeeks.com/Partition_Logic_d4780.html
Easeus Partition Manager http://majorgeeks.com/EASEUS_Partition_Manager_Home_Edition__d6006.html
SeaTools (to diagnose your Seagate hard drives) http://majorgeeks.com/Seagate_SeaTools_for_Windows_and_DOS_d2858.html
Seagate Disc Wizard (to wipe the drive) http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

I hope this helps! Good luck, and keep us posted!