pavillian 513n IDE or BIOS problems

HP Pavillion 513n
256 MB RAM
1-8 MB Video card I am guessing as that is what i found in the BIOS
1.8ghz Intel celeron
10/100 MBit ethernet
aftermarket Hardrive 20gb (test drive that I am using.)
WinXP HOME
Hello everyone... I am having problems repairing a client' s computer. This computer has had me at bay for a couple of weeks now. The problem is that once i get past the HP logo i get a blinking line as if it's trying to detect the operating system but failing at the same time, BUT the reason i don't think the hardrive doesn't have an Operating system on it is because it would normally say " DISK BOOT FAILURE PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM BOOT DISK" or something like that. It has to do with either the bios being corrupy or the IDE controllers are Dead. the other problem is that i don't think that the IDE controllers are Dead becuase it reads the Hard Drives and the Cd Drive. I am wondering now if I should try a PCI to IDE card but how would it load the operating system if there are no drivers for the IDE card to work? ANY help would be FANTASTIC!
Thanks
Derek

 

Have you tried installing the operating system to the 20gb drive? Have you run a hard drive diagnostic? Have you tried booting to DOS startup disk and running FDISK on the drive? Can you boot to the Windows install CD? Does it see the hard drive? If the drive has data on it that needs saving, boot to a live CD like a BartsPECD or Knoppix or something similar and copy the data to an external USB drive (plugged in before booting, of course). Seems to me that there's many courses of action still available. IDE controllers rarely go out, and a corrupt BIOS would be painfully obvious. Can you enter the BIOS and does it correctly recognize the IDE devices? Try some (or all) of these things and let us know how it goes. If you need some links for boot disks or diagnostics, just let us know. Post the make of the hard drive (Western Digital; Seagate; Hitachi; etc), all the main drive makers have free diagnostics you can download from their web sites....

 

Well... I already tried booting off of a cd... for some reason it won't boot off the cd. i am going to check how IDE cables are hooked up and try something else. Also for some odd reason when i go into the bios the hardrive is read as
LC35l020avero7-0backwards L is that a hint that the bios is corrupt.. I might be able to post a picture of my bios screens or at least the ones that are needed. it depends on if i can get a digital camera at my workplace to use.

 

oh yeah and i also forgot to mention that the hardrive make for the original hard drive might be WD and the aftermarket one is an IBM deskstar...

 

Sorry for tripple posting. Heres the picture of the HArd drive identification..

 

The hard drive identificatio is fine. It shows that it's an IBM drive (the IC stands for IBM Corporation). There is NOT a backward L anywhere. What you're seeing as a backward L is a set of brackets around the [part number]. Have you downloaded and run the diagnostic tools yet? You can download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD (also called the UBCD for short). The UBCD has many diagnostic tools on it including the diagnostics from all the main drive makers (inlcuding IBM/Hitachi and Western Digital among others). It is an .ISO file. Meaning you cannot just burn it as a data disc. You must burn it as an image. Just about every CD burning program will have an option that says something similar to "Create CD from disc image" or maybe "Burn CD from image file". That is the option you'll use to correctly burn an .ISO image file. Then boot to the CD. It's totally self explanatory once you boot to it. So just run the appropriate diagnostic tool (use the advanced/extended tests) to make sure your hard drive(s) are healthy. Here's some links:
Ultimate Boot CD download link http://www.majorgeeks.com/Ultimate_Boot_CD_d4019.html
EasyISO (program for burning ISO files) http://www.majorgeeks.com/EasyISO_d2499.html (just click 'Iso Menu' in the lower left; then click 'Burn ISO'; then browse to where you downloaded the UBCD .ISO file; EASY!!!!)
Both downloads are compressed (or 'zipped'). The UBCD is self extracting; just double click on it and it will extract itself. EasyISO is a zip file; if using WinXP, right click the file, select 'Extract all' and follow the ons creen prompts. If not using WinXP, you'll need a program to unzip the file. WinZIP and WinRAR are two very popular (but not free) programs for this; some good free ones are TUGzip and 7zip. All of these are available here at Major Geeks (in the Miscellaneous section I think).
If you run into any issues, let us know. Good luck!

[dlb]

 

one problem i tried booting from cd but it still gives me the blinking line, i put an XP Pro sp1 cd in and it still gave me the blinking line. Heres a question for you all, if i try to boot from usb using like D**n small linux or something, judging by the age of this comptuer will it work? (this computer was made in 2002.)