Travelmate 2500 will not Boot

[Mutumbac]

Dear All

A friend of mine gave me a Travelmate 2500, PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Relase 6.0 Notepad and I discovered that it has a problem - it will not boot and gives error msg “operating system not found”. The disk is not registering in BIOS and so I opened the laptop and discovered the hard disk is missing, so I replaced it with a 60GB IDE Disk and still I am getting the same msg. I tried another 20 GB Hard disk but still get the same msg. I tried both disks on another laptop and they are being detected perfectly.
I am suspecting the BIOS to be corrupt, can some one help ASAP.
Thanx

Cuthy

[tbone2sk]

When you say that it is not registering are you just looking at the boot screen and it is not displaying the drive? Try going into the BIOS/IDE drives and see if you need to enable the IDE auto-setup. It is common for laptops to have fast boot where it will will not look for new hardware and just remember the last hardware profile until you enter the BIOS. To get into the BIOS try spamming DEL, F2, or F1.
If your BIOS is corrupted you can always flash it with a flash drive.

[Jupiter 2]

When you put in the drive, you will have to load software. You should have got at least an error message that says OS missing.

A new HDD does not register till it has been setup. Fdisk is the old way so I'm not sure if an OS CD will fdisk a new drive before setup.

Bios setup CD as first boot then hdd as second boot. Turn off or disable network boot.

[Mutumbac]

When you put in the drive, you will have to load software. You should have got at least an error message that says OS missing.

A new HDD does not register till it has been setup. Fdisk is the old way so I'm not sure if an OS CD will fdisk a new drive before setup.

Bios setup CD as first boot then hdd as second boot. Turn off or disable network boot.

Dear Jupiter 2,

Thanks very much for the reply. My interest at the moment is to have the IDE HDD detected in BIOS, and then I can preparing the disk for use and loading the O/S. BIOS has no manual HDD setup, meaning that it has to automatically detect the HDD once mounted (This is not happening).

Any ideas

Thanx a span

[Mutumbac]

When you put in the drive, you will have to load software. You should have got at least an error message that says OS missing.

A new HDD does not register till it has been setup. Fdisk is the old way so I'm not sure if an OS CD will fdisk a new drive before setup.

Bios setup CD as first boot then hdd as second boot. Turn off or disable network boot.

Dear Jupiter 2,

Thanks very much for the reply. My interest at the moment is to have the IDE HDD detected in BIOS, and then I can preparing the disk for use and loading the O/S. BIOS has no manual HDD setup, meaning that it has to automatically detect the HDD once mounted (This is not happening).

Any ideas

Thanx a span

[Jupiter 2]

You could just try a cd setup and see if it detects the drive. You cvould also check to see if Netwrk is enabled and disable it.

I usually disable all Lan and network references on a new load.

[Bob_180_Bob]

Hi Jupiter 2,
I am sorry but I do not understand a lot of what you are saying, please tell me what it is that you are trying to say.

it will not boot and gives error msg “operating system not found”. The disk is not registering in BIOS and so I opened the laptop and discovered the hard disk is missing, so I replaced it with a 60GB IDE Disk and still I am getting the same msg. I tried another 20 GB Hard disk but still get the same msg. I tried both disks on another laptop and they are being detected perfectly.
I am suspecting the BIOS to be corrupt, can some one help ASAP.
Thanx
Cuthy

The poster is getting the error message " operating system not found"

When you put in the drive, you will have to load software. You should have got at least an error message that says OS missing.

A new HDD does not register till it has been setup. Fdisk is the old way so I'm not sure if an OS CD will fdisk a new drive before setup.

Bios setup CD as first boot then hdd as second boot. Turn off or disable network boot.

How can you load software to a drive that is not recognized?
"F Disk" is a DOS command, you would have to boot the machine with a DOS boot disk, you could then "FDisk" the drive (if the BIOS could now find it) and then format. I have not found this option on a Windows Operating System CD.
Does the poster have "Boot from network" turned on and is trying to boot from the network?

You could just try a cd setup and see if it detects the drive. You cvould also check to see if Netwrk is enabled and disable it.
I usually disable all Lan and network references on a new load.

Will the "cd setup" detect the drive that the BIOS won't?
Will having network enabled stop the BIOS from detecting the drive?
Can they be enabled on an old load?