Member Avatar for Ben21

My Grandmother's old Gateway computer is not working, when you turn it on, you get a message that says, "The Hard Drive was not found. Press Esc to prevent displaying this warning in the future, Press the Enter key to continue without a hard drive."

No matter what you push, it brings you to a black screen with just a blinking curser in the top left corner. I tried typing at the curser and nothing happened.

Hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del just restarts the whole computer and brings you back to the hard drive message again. Any suggestions?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by John A
Member Avatar for John A

The easiest thing to try is to reset the BIOS. When the computer is booting, it will usually say something like "Press DEL to enter setup". If not, just try hitting the DELETE or F1 key. When you enter the BIOS, you will see a menu of different commands. Hopefully, you will see an item that says "Reset BIOS". Hit that, exit out of the BIOS, and see if that works.

If not, then your hard drive cable is probably loose or disconnected. If you savvy enough, try opening up your computer, and wiggling the cable that connects your hard drive to the motherboard. Still not working? Probably a hard drive failure. You will need a new hard drive, which is pretty inexpensive.

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