Hard Drive cannot boot

[Mongz]

Hi Fellows.

I have a confusing problem of Samsung laptop which uses Toshiba MK2555GSX internal hard drive. I have encountered a problem when i tried to start the machine and it respond with a message "cannot find hard-disk, press ctrl,Alt & delete to restart". i thought it could probably be MBR corrupted. I tried to re-install windows (windows 7, starter) using recovery disk, it does pick up that there is a hard drive furthermore it can install the operating system but problem is, when its the turn for the machine to restart as it approach the end of windows installation process, it cannot boot from the hard drive as to continue finish the installation. Therefore it restarts the windows installation from scratch. it does this over and over.
But confusing part is, when i take out the hard drive and put it on the desktop and set it to be primary disk, it does continue from the last stage where it stopped with the installation of windows. Furthermore it operates very well on the desktop as like the installation was begun on the desktop.
Kindly advise what i should be looking at the problem and what further steps i can take.

Your input will be highly appreciated.

[Cross213]

Your HDD is clearly not being detected or it is dead. Try taking it out and putting in another one to see. Perhaps also change your cables around and see if anything gives.

[Mongz]

If you read on paragraph 2, i mention about putting the HDD to a desktop where it worked perfectly. what i haven't tried is using another laptop HDD to the laptop.
But thanks for the input.

[mjdodd]

A further idea would be to start the computer but not using the hard drive. You could use the windows disk and go to safe mode or better to set the bios to first boot from a cd drive and then use a linux boot anything type cd.
Then you can use that CD and its OS to look at your hard drive and if it cannot see it then the drive is not working. If all appears well then as you suggest is would seem that there is corruption on the drive and MBR and partitions need to be looked at;
It may be that the drive is partition and the boot primary partition has got moved to a different partition.
M

[imalizya]

check out jumper

[Mongz]

Ok i finaly admit. Its the HDD itself, i just bought a new HDD and its working absolutely fine. The old hard drive is working well on my desktop and its close to a week it has'nt given problem. Big question is whats wrong with that HDD when i use it to that laptop.
But then thanks for your input.