My question is a very general one, and I've searched for help, but to no avail, as there are so many different options to choose from. I need to know where to begin from square one...

We have a Gateway Computer that was purchased in 2003, that runs Windows XP. We haven't had any major problems with it until now. We tried to boot up the computer a few days ago, and this is the message we received...

" No Hard Drive Found" press any key to continue...

well, thats about it. We press any other key, nothing happens...we took the tower case off to check out the connections, the hard drive ribbon, etc...put it all back together and still nothing.

I'm kinda computer savvy when it comes to specific programs, but I am a complete fish outta water when it comes to hardware issues. Ive read that I should check into the BIOS, but what EXACTLY am I looking for? Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this particular hard drive has tons of pictures of my son that I've taken over the years that cant be replaced...

Hello, and Welcome to D-A-L.

If you know the manufacturer of the hard disk, download the diagnostic tools for the drive from here;

Hard Disk Analysis Tools - Major manufacturers

and test the hard disk.

From what I could glean from the Gateway site, they (now at least) use Western Digital hard disks.

There is the possibility that the CMOS battery may be dying, thereby loosing the hard disk parameters. However, once power is applied, the bios would revert to default settings, (usually hard disk auto-detection) and find it again.

Post back with your results and any further questions.

Thank Ya Dan!! Im not quite sure how I fixed it,but I read alot on this site, so I went into BIOS and reset defaults and then brought the computer up in safe mode and went in and ran a full scan using Norton, restarted computer and wa-laa, all better now...

Thanks again for such a wonderful and useful site!!

"so I went into BIOS and reset defaults..."

Outstanding! Glad you got things sorted.

(I've been away due to relocating from Ontario to Alberta. Just got hooked up to the net again, else I'd have been here sooner.)


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