Hi, new poster, long time reader, got a fun one here, I'll copy + paste what I said on a different forum.
Ok, have a friend that's having "issues" with his laptop. He installed the FedEx Shipmanager software, which is all fine and dandy, works on like any Win2k/XP system.
He gets a critical error from Windows once the program was installed, Windows starts shutting down. Reboots, boots past bios, goes to load windows.....
"Operating System not found."
................
So he calls Dell, his laptop is just out of warrenty, they say to talk to me (FedEx tech). So he gets me, we throw in his (legit) WinXP CD, goes through the Windows setup thingy, then comes up, "Hard Drive not found."
....damn?
Go check the BIOS, and since I don't have screens of his bios, I can't think of exactly what to tell him to do, Hard Drive is listed as "none". To me, it doens't sound like a standard BIOS, because you don't press +/- or enter to change settings, sounds like the HD is on auto-detect and you can't do anything about it.
We cracked open the chassis, removed HD, put it back in, make sure it was seated properly etc, still no go. Next day, he takes out the HD, throws it in his friends Inspiron, slightly newer model, and it boots.
Now, you tell me 1.) How did installing software fry the I/O controller for the HD and 2.) What in gods name should we do?
He's on a tight budget so we're not about to blow 200$ on a 50gb HD and finding it doesn't work. I've called his account manager, we're trying to get him a FDX owned system to work with, but he has 25,000 shipments due for next week....needless to say, this will be fun 🙂
Ok, have a friend that's having "issues" with his laptop. He installed the FedEx Shipmanager software, which is all fine and dandy, works on like any Win2k/XP system.
He gets a critical error from Windows once the program was installed, Windows starts shutting down. Reboots, boots past bios, goes to load windows.....
"Operating System not found."
................
So he calls Dell, his laptop is just out of warrenty, they say to talk to me (FedEx tech). So he gets me, we throw in his (legit) WinXP CD, goes through the Windows setup thingy, then comes up, "Hard Drive not found."
....damn?
Go check the BIOS, and since I don't have screens of his bios, I can't think of exactly what to tell him to do, Hard Drive is listed as "none". To me, it doens't sound like a standard BIOS, because you don't press +/- or enter to change settings, sounds like the HD is on auto-detect and you can't do anything about it.
We cracked open the chassis, removed HD, put it back in, make sure it was seated properly etc, still no go. Next day, he takes out the HD, throws it in his friends Inspiron, slightly newer model, and it boots.
Now, you tell me 1.) How did installing software fry the I/O controller for the HD and 2.) What in gods name should we do?
He's on a tight budget so we're not about to blow 200$ on a 50gb HD and finding it doesn't work. I've called his account manager, we're trying to get him a FDX owned system to work with, but he has 25,000 shipments due for next week....needless to say, this will be fun 🙂
