i took out my hard drive and put in a bigger one and put my 40 gig into a usb hard drive caddy worked twice then stopped working so I went to put it back in laptop and tried to reinstall windows I got error no hard drive installed on your pc can any one help or have i killed the hard drive

Have you checked the connections? Is the drive detected in the BIOS POST?

u can hear noises coming from the drive but when u go into bios setup it says primary master none

Hi Ian,

We are currently updating our FAQ system at D-A-L.com and I've got a three-part article all about getting the BIOS to auto-detect your hard disk. Here's the first part (let us know whether it helps) :

Part 1
If a physical drive in your PC (a hard disk, DVD drive, etc) has gone missing from Windows Explorer and a reboot doesn't bring it back, take a quick trip into the BIOS to see if it needs to Auto-Detect your drive again.
The BIOS is the underlying system that works out what's connected to your motherboard and if that doesn't realise that a drive exists, then Windows will probably not notice it either.
To get into the BIOS, reboot your system and, when the power comes back on, press F2 or Delete repeatedly (once every second) until the blue BIOS screen appears. As soon as most systems start up, they will say "Press F2 to enter system setup" or "Press Delete to enter the BIOS" or something similar to let you know which key to use.
Use your cursor keys to select Auto-Detect Hard Disks (or a similar name) and press Enter.
When that finishes (after a few seconds), go to Save & Exit (or similar name) and boot up normally into Windows.
(Note that, like the Windows registry, incorrect use of the BIOS may have adverse effects on your system).

Auto-Detect Hard Disk is turned on still no joy

Do you have floppy boot access on this laptop?

If so, boot with a 98SE bootdisk choosing "Without CDROM support". (Not required at this point.) When you get the A:\> prompt, type in fdisk/status or fdisk, (choose Large Disk Support, and then option #4. Post back the results of either or both. This will tell us what your system is "seeing" for the hard disk(s).

don't have a floppy drive

Originally Posted by ian2494

Auto-Detect Hard Disk is turned on still no joy

OK, here's part 2 of my forthcoming FAQ:

Part 2

These instructions were given to a member when the 'Auto-Detect Hard Disks' option in the BIOS didn't find the hard disk that was fitted inside their PC. It assumes that only one hard disk is fitted.


Disconnect the PC from the mains.
If possible, take the base unit to an area of the house that isn't carpeted (to try and avoid static electricity).
Remove the lid or right-hand side (viewed from the back) of the system case.
Towards the front of the case, you should see the CD-ROM drive at the top, the floppy drive in the middle and the hard disk at the bottom.

Unscrew and remove the drive and note the settings for that drive for Cylinders, Heads and Sectors (CHS). It will be probably be shown in a format like 16383/16/63.

Make sure the the jumper (very small plastic plug that sits over a couple of the small pin terminals) on the back set the Master position. There is normally a label on the drive that shows the jumper pin settings.

Refit the drive.

Make sure the grey IDE cable is securely connected to the back of the drive. Push your finger along the connector to ensure it's firmly seated across the whole connector.

Make sure the power cable is firmly plugged in - it should feel pretty tight.

Refit the system case. Plug the mains power, keyboard, etc back in.

Switch on and go into the BIOS. Go to the Auto-detect hard disk option.

If it still says 'None', then go into the screen that lists the drives, move across to the 'Type' field in the 'Primary Master' row and set this to 'User' or whatever similar option you have where you can type in the Cylinders, Heads and Sectors. Type in the CHS settings that you noted down earlier. The 'Size' field should now display the correct size of the hard disk. If it doesn't, there might be a 'Mode' or 'Block' option in the last column on the right, which you can probably set to 'Auto'.

Exit the BIOS, saving the changes.

The PC will reboot and will try to load Windows. Does it work now? If it doesn't, you've probably got a faulty hard disk. We might be able to still try something else though, so let us know (you'll need to tell us if you couldn't follow any part of the above instructions because you didn't have the same options, etc).

(Note that, like the Windows registry, incorrect use of the BIOS may have adverse effects on your system).