Any advice welcome please and apologies for my lack of knowledge! My PC has suddenly stopped working. When it's switched on, the logo screen appears with 'TAB TO VIEW POST SCREEN, DEL FOR SETUP', the next screen is a lot of data that I don't really understand, then I get the message 'NO HPA READY DRIVE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK'. I don't have a system disk for Windows XP which is its operating system. What can I do? I do have a recovery disk for Windows Vista which came with a laptop - can I just use this instead?
PC WILL NOT BOOT FROM HARD DISK
- Thread starter Weasill
- Start date
Hi Weasill, welcome to NST.
Don't start messing with the Vista recovery disk. Wrong OS. Wrong bootloader. Wrong hardware. Bad Idea.
Hit Del to go into the BIOS, then look at the HDD page. There should be an entry there describing your HDD (make, serial number size etc), but from the sound of the message it won't be there.
Sometimes (it's happened to me a few times over the years), the connections to the HDD get dirty/corroded, and a comunication breakdown occurs.
Power the system off (swich it off at the mains switch on the back of the box, but leave it plugged in to maintain the earth connection to protect your components from static)
Open up the box, disconnect/reconnect all the leads to the HDD several times to clean up the metal to metal contact on the pins.
Close up, power on and reboot and see if that fixes it.
Don't start messing with the Vista recovery disk. Wrong OS. Wrong bootloader. Wrong hardware. Bad Idea.
Hit Del to go into the BIOS, then look at the HDD page. There should be an entry there describing your HDD (make, serial number size etc), but from the sound of the message it won't be there.
Sometimes (it's happened to me a few times over the years), the connections to the HDD get dirty/corroded, and a comunication breakdown occurs.
Power the system off (swich it off at the mains switch on the back of the box, but leave it plugged in to maintain the earth connection to protect your components from static)
Open up the box, disconnect/reconnect all the leads to the HDD several times to clean up the metal to metal contact on the pins.
Close up, power on and reboot and see if that fixes it.