Need technical help with AOpen 1846 P4 Laptop

[jediphx]

I bought two old P4 laptops, both are the same exact model and specs. One is working fine and I successfully installed XP Pro SP3 etc on it. The other boots to bios fine but will not detect a HD when its inserted. I know the HD is fine because it was detected fine in the other laptop. I tried reflashing the bios, cleaning every area I could get to with compressed air but no luck. It doesnt give an error it just says none for hdds and windows setup shuts down because no drive is detected. Any ideas? Could it be the HD controller on the mobo has gone bad? I did run quite a lot of diagnostic off a boot CD and the motherboard etc etc all passed fine.

 

[jediphx]

Bump for help

 

[mpilchfamily]

Yes it souondls like the chipset may be bad. Nothing you can do about really. At least you have spare parts for the working unit.

 

[jediphx]

Good news, for some reason it didnt like that HD, i was able to get another brand and now its working fine.