Evening Folks,
I have a V2030 that stopped booting up, it would just cycle to BSOD's. As an IT person with a few years experience, I decided the HDD was bust or the Windows installation is corrupt. I tried reinstalling Windows but was getting nowhere with it. Vista would just keep rebooting when I tried to install it, and XP would get stuck at around 65% of the installation process. I purchased a new SATA HDD this morning thinking that now everything would be right with the world - oh how wrong I was! I'm going to go through my steps 1 by 1 now.
1) Tried to install XP. It tells me there's no HDD found once I get to that stage.
2) I google it and find that XP doesn't come with SATA drivers. Pretty annoyed by this but OK, I'll deal with that.
3) Looked on Hitachi's website and they say their HDD's don't need drivers, it should be part of the motherboard driver.
4) Found this (http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml) article elsewhere, followed it. It told me how to create a Windows disk which already had the drivers included. Downloaded all the relevant drivers from Fujitsu (Chipset, Graphics, LAN, think that should be enough). Created Windows Disk with those drivers already included. I boot the machine again, it goes straight to the Windows installation, and still says that no HDD is installed in my machine. Bios also says there is no HDD installed.
5) Post here.
6) Win?
Thanks in advance guys. I was looking forward to a whole day of Call Of Duty today but no, I have to fix this laptop for my friend, and it has to be the most awkward piece of trash I've ever come across!
The HDD I purchased is a Hitachi 5K500 B-160, HTS545016B9A300. It's 160GB with 5400RPM.
Before someone mentions the obvious, I don't have the original disk that came with the laptop for reinstalling Windows.
Thanks again. I'm off out now but will check back in a few hours. If I've missed any information that you need to figure this out, just let me know.