Hard-drive not detected in bios - any CD based boot manager available to boot it?

Zapho

Hey lads,

I'm fixing a Sony Vaio (VGN-FJ3S) that has an unusual problem - I get the common error "operating system not found" when booting almost everytime I start it up (maybe one time in 20 it will boot the harddrive). Here's what I've done so far:

I checked the hard-drive, everything is fine - it booted another laptop without any hassle. Chkdks reported no problems.

I sussed out the sata controller - also working normally. If I boot into ubuntu using a liveCD, the hard-drive shows up, is mountable and works fine.

I figure the bios is fecked. Tried updating it, still has the same problem. It won't store any changes I make, expect to the RTC. I changed the cmos battery - no luck. I've done a lot of messing around with this.

So I want to know if there's a low level boot manager somewhere I could burn to disk and would allow me to boot the hard-drive? I've tried Plop bootmanager which is good - I can boot to USB using it which isn't supported by the laptop bios - but it won't detect the harddrive.

Snowbat

Any change if you boot on AC power with the laptop battery disconnected?

ricman

GO to bios set ,autodetect all drives, try a mint livecd ,mint linux fits on a 700meg cdr.THERES also ebcd or ultimateboot cd ,if you want to try drive diagnostic testing.mint gives you the option of installing to hardrive,or run from cd.

Zapho

Snowbat wrote: »

Any change if you boot on AC power with the laptop battery disconnected?

Yeah, I've been running it without the battery in since the start, it hasn't helped.

ricman wrote:

GO to bios set ,autodetect all drives, try a mint livecd ,mint linux fits on a 700meg cdr.THERES also ebcd or ultimateboot cd ,if you want to try drive diagnostic testing.mint gives you the option of installing to hardrive,or run from cd.

The bios is some Award bios derivative, but its severely limited. There is no "auto-detect" function. There's very little else you can change. I've been using Hiren's boot cd and a ubuntu liveCD which has basically the same functionality as mint livecd.

ricman

YOU could have,virus,malware, back up data, reinstall the os.use drivermax to backup the drivers to folder,my drivers,burn this folder to a cdr,and copy to usb drive.with a full ntfs format, and reinstall the drive may boot up fine.
or try f8 safe mode, directory services restore mode.
see here http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

FSL

ricman wrote: »

YOU could have,virus,malware, back up data, reinstall the os.use drivermax to backup the drivers to folder,my drivers,burn this folder to a cdr,and copy to usb drive.with a full ntfs format, and reinstall the drive may boot up fine.
or try f8 safe mode, directory services restore mode.
see here http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

The Op has booted a different laptop with the hard drive so it is highly unlikely that the problem is caused by a virus or malware.

JonathanAnon

Two Questions:

i. Did the hard drive boot EVERY time when you plugged it in to the other laptop.. ?

ii. I dont see how the Ubuntu CD OS can see the hard drive if the BIOS cant see it .. this doesnt make sense.

Zapho

JonathanAnon wrote: »

Two Questions:

i. Did the hard drive boot EVERY time when you plugged it in to the other laptop.. ?

ii. I dont see how the Ubuntu CD OS can see the hard drive if the BIOS cant see it .. this doesnt make sense.

Exactly, it has me pretty stumped. Now that you mention it, I only tried booting the other laptop the once. Once windows started loading, I stopped it so that it woudln't start installing new drivers.

For your second point - yes it certainly doesn't make any sense. I was thinking that perhaps it was a dodgy sata cable. So I've stripped the laptop down and checked all the connections and they're all fine. Could it be a corrupted CMOS?

jpl888

Zapho wrote: »

Exactly, it has me pretty stumped. Now that you mention it, I only tried booting the other laptop the once. Once windows started loading, I stopped it so that it woudln't start installing new drivers.

For your second point - yes it certainly doesn't make any sense. I was thinking that perhaps it was a dodgy sata cable. So I've stripped the laptop down and checked all the connections and they're all fine. Could it be a corrupted CMOS?

As Ubuntu is seeing the drive I don't think the BIOS is at fault. You might be able to confirm whether you can see the drive information by looking at the "device info" page or equivalent.

I think it is more likely that the master boot record is fecked.

Boot from the Windows CD and get to the recovery console then:-

chkdsk /f
fixmbr
fixboot

If that doesn't work then the problem may be with the physical boot sector itself.

See how you get on.

Ref:- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321626

Zapho

jpl888 wrote: »

As Ubuntu is seeing the drive I don't think the BIOS is at fault. You might be able to confirm whether you can see the drive information by looking at the "device info" page or equivalent.

I think it is more likely that the master boot record is fecked.

Boot from the Windows CD and get to the recovery console then:-

chkdsk /f
fixmbr
fixboot

If that doesn't work then the problem may be with the physical boot sector itself.

See how you get on.

Ref:- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321626

Cheers for this jpl888, but I'm a step ahead of you! I've tried all that with no luck. Also, the hard drive can boot another laptop of mine with no issues at all. However, if I put another working hard drive into the faulty laptop in question, it doesn't boot either.

I do have other symtoms to report though, if anybody recognises them. The laptop doesn't seem to get past POST much anymore. Initially, it would happen maybe one time in 5 - now its happening almost all the time. The hard drive LED blinks and the cd rom drive tries to spin up, gets interrupted and tries again. If I leave it like this, sometimes the machine will start up after a while, sometimes it won't.

Any more ideas? Keep 'em comin, this really helping me!

jpl888

Is there a "reset to defaults" option in the BIOS?

Other than that you already tried flashing so I'm out of ideas after that.