My dad has his old work Compaq nx7400 from his previous job that started blue-screening this week on boot. It goes to the Windows load screen for XP and then just cycles back to POST. The drive is operating properly and when I hooked it up to my SATA to USB adaptor on my desktop, I can read the data just fine. When I go into the BIOS on his laptop though, I do not see the HDD listed and get the same error when I run a Windows XP system CD. I also have several other laptops I could try it in, but none of them use SATA drives and his does, so I can't just drop it in to see if the BIOS sees it.

I know I could yank the data, format and go from there and that would probably work. However its got a number of programs on it that he got from his previous employer which he can't reinstall. Do ya'll have any suggestions for other shit I can try to fix it before I tell him he's fucked? Thanks.

[Edited on January 15, 2010 at 11:33 PM. Reason : ]

1/15/2010 11:32:43 PM

If you hit F8, and see the various drivers it is attempting to load, what is the last thing it tries to load before it goes back to POST?

1/16/2010 8:36:04 AM

Well I got past one point. The SATA controller was not on the Windows CD, hence why I couldn't access the HDD on the Windows CD. So I got past that. Now trying to do a repair and its hanging at Insert Intel Boot Matrix Manger disk in Drive A. I found something for making one on Intel's website, but putting it in didn't work. I will try and do it on F6 later. So thats where I'm at now.

1/16/2010 10:46:39 AM