Please help, I just recently installed a new hard drive. I connected the pin setting to "Master" and installed the cable. I then shut down and restarted. I then tried to install the operating system after it booted up and I got an error message indicating that no hard drive was detected. I figured that I needed to do a FDISK which I tried. I had installed the basic boot up files which included the FDISK and FORMAT.COM on C drive. After checking that these files had been installed, I did a SCANDISK which recognized the drive. I then tried to do a FDISK which did not work. I get the error message "No fixed disk present" at the end of Cpromt. How can I correct this problem? By the way, I am trying to reinstall Widows Mill operating system. I do have the 3 recovery disk but until I can get the disk formated, I can't do anything with these disks. I have a HP Pavilion 78oo model.:confused:

I connected the pin setting to "Master" and installed the cable. I then shut down and restarted.
It appears from your description that the computer was powered up while you installed the HD's cable.
If so, then that may be the reason why you're getting the "No fixed disk present" message.
All connections have to be made with the power turned off and the power cord disconnected from the computer.

But if that's not the case, then did you partition the HD with an active partition before trying to format it?

Have you tried going into the bios and choosing 'auto-detect hard disk drives'?

If the drive is still alive, it should at least give you some form of report.

I can't get to the bios settings, for some reason, it will not allow me to go there and as far as partitioning it, I can't do that either. the only thing that I can read is the ramdrive disks.Also, all of the cables were disconnected when I installed the drive. Nothing was attached to the case at all.

Are you holding down the F1 key during startup to enter BIOS?

The manufacturer of the new HD should have installation instructions on their site.


Some HD's cannot be set to Master if there is no slave on the same cable. For example Western Digital drives have a "Single Drive" position for the jumper if no other drive is present on the cable.

Also some larger drives may require two jumpers.

If you are booting from a Windows Start Up disk and no hard drive is detected, a Ramdrive (logical drive residing in memory) is created to hold the DOS files that are on the StartUp floppy. This RAM drive will be assigned a drive letter, in your case C: since there is no hard drive detected. This is not a real drive and cannot be partitioned.

First thing to know is whether the drive is detected in the bios - but since you cant get into the bios setup this becomes problematic. Are you sure you are holding down the correct key?

Detach the HDD from the mobo and then if you can get into the BIOS with no HDD attached I would suspect a faulty hdd or cables/connections.

Next thing could be to check-out the drive with the HDD manufacturers diagnostic utility from their website and/or on another pc. If the drive is OK then I would zero it using the same utility.

Then use a Win98 or WinME start-up diskette and fdisk with large drive support. Reboot and Format. Reboot with CDROM support and run setup from the installation CD.

Just had another thought here - Now you've posted that you couldn't get to the bios, it reminded me of a problem I had just before christmas - this was a similar situation. I'd built a new system, put in the HDD, and nothing would happen - I couldn't reach bios or anything.
The HDD turned out to be faulty - it was a western digital wd400 (40GB)

Do you have another HDD you can try? If so, remove the HDD, and see if you can reach the BIOS, and select 'load failsafe defaults'

Guess what folks, turns out that the hard drive was no good, upgraded to a 60 gig and everything is just fine. In response to your comment "deddard", I to had the same drive that you had. It was a WD400 (40GB). Thanks for all the imput from all of you. Learn something new everyday. :D