No boot with Acer 4150 after using killdisk pro

[rahulkohli]

I was wiping a laptop with killdisk pro for somebody who wanted to give it to a 3rd party. Essentially I was 33% of the way through wiping the drive of the laptop and I closed the screen because I needed to take the laptop with me inthe car in the bag. But when I pressed the power button when I got home the laptop didn't boot. All that happens is that the Acer logo comes on and then the screen turns black with a flashing cursor in the top left corner.
I tried putting my win xp sp2 cd in but I can't get to any boot screen or anything like that. I can't find the recovery CD's that came with the laptop i'm afraid.

Any help would be much appreciated as to what to do now. As I need to fix this because it's not my laptop.

 

[Severian]

you need to set the optical drive to boot first in the BIOS, then you should be able to boot from your WinXP cd. If you don't have the recovery CD's, how were you planning on reinstalling the OS?

 

[rahulkohli]

I can't get to any bios screen i'm afraid. As I said before, I see the acer logo then it goes to the black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left. I know how to fiddle with the bios etc but I can't seem to get to any other screen apart from that.

I was planning to reinstall the OS with a Win XP SP2 CD.

I'm not even sure what the error is. Previously when I have wiped a HD with killdisk and tried to boot with that drive the bios has come up and asked me whether I want to put a file system on this drive becuase it has no OS or file system on it, (which I would expect to happen after a wiping). However this didn't happen this time. The only difference is that the previous times I have done that on a PC and this time I did it with a laptop.

 

[montag451]

to get to the BIOS screen, try hitting F10 or F12 or F8 or F2 when the Acer screen is up.
Most likely to get you in.

 

[rahulkohli]

Originally posted by: montag451
to get to the BIOS screen, try hitting F10 or F12 or F8 or F2 when the Acer screen is up.
Most likely to get you in.

I tried all these things but with no joy. So...

I managed to get the laptop HD out and put it in my PC and it said that it wasn't formatted, so I formatted it with windows, then put it back in my laptop but it said "ntdlr is missing, press CTRL, ALT DEL to restart. "

Now I have no idea's. I can't get to any BIOS screen to help me to boot from CD.

 

[montag451]

Sometimes it could be 'delete' key or escape or any key=
Try turning it on and playing the piano with the keyboard - pretend you are little richard for 3 seconds.
You will eventually find the key.

 

[rahulkohli]

I don't seem to be getting any joy with the button pressing.

Is it possible to install Windows on the laptop HD while while it's plugged into a PC's hardware and then put that HD in the laptop and for it to work. or is a windows install and subsequent boot dependant on the hardware configuration (which will obviously be different)

 

[montag451]

You could try that - but the chances are that it will crash when you put the hdd into laptop.
You could try that - then 'sysprep' (found on xp cd) that might help you out.

I am convinced that you will get into BIOS somehow by pressing keys - never known any system to not give that option.

 

[Severian]

Montag is right, you just haven't found the right key yet. Have you tried Acer's support page? Sometimes laptops use the darnedest keys to access the BIOS.

 

[rahulkohli]

I'm gonn have a look at the support page. I'll be back if I don't find anything.

 

[rahulkohli]

I have had absolutely no joy with this predicament. Pressed all the buttons on the boot up. looked in the manual (it said press F2) and still no joy. So I think I may just try a new hard drive and see if that works. i've never had to replace a laptp hard drive so how do I find out if a new hard drive is compatible.