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Hard pin missed

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4electros

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Hello , I have a hard disk which has one of its pins missed, so it can't be recognized by the PC and sometimes when I use a boot CD I had the following message:
"Windows can't be installed, because of there is no hard disk or the hard disk doesn't function properly,or it needs special software driver to get it work."

Sometimes the pc could boot at safe mode and as soon as it logged in windows, everything freezed so the icons and other windows standards doesn't appear.

Does the missed pin of that hard disk broke it so it won't work again?Or that would be of another reason?

help me please.
thanks in advance!
 
if you are talking about 40-pin ATA connector, there is one pin that is missing on purpose - cable that goes there has that pin plugged so one doesn't turn it wrong way (rotate 180deg). it is close to the middle of the connector
**broken link removed**
 
another posibility is that motherboard is older and doesn't recognize HDD. normally if you leave it on AUTO it should be fine. meny people don't like that since it takes longer to boot (HDD is recognized every time you turn on PC).
If this is what happened and then you replaced drive for bigger one, you could also see the issue. also there could be problem with your power supply. HDDs require more juice to start spinning till they reach operating speed. old power supplies like 350W are long obsoleted since new machines need more jiuce (big fat CPU, more RAM, Fast graphic card, HDD, CD/DVD burner, more fans etc. and they all need more power). standard these days in the 450W range (or more). you can see if the problem goes away if you remove some hardware (not the keyboard of course).
you should also check if your HDD and motherboard have compatibility issues or if there is need for startup delay (some HDDs take longer to spin up to the right speed and until they reach the speed, they don't "work", this is worsened by weak PSU). if this is supported it should be in your motherboard BIOS.
 
Windoze might go to safe mode on it's own for many reasons. maybe it's the stability of platform that gives you headacke or because it wasn't shut down properly - you do let PC shut down don'y you? or maybe you just turn power off by switch on your powerbar? that's not good idea...
if not, open PC and check if everything is seated correctly, try reseating every card and connector, see if CPU fan is working and not stopped by something like drive cable or unused connector, etc. does your power supply fan work? if not you might not get enough juice since the PSU is overheating and shutting down. same goes for CPU, memory or any card or chip that might get hot. This could also be caused by malware but that's not the problem, remove not essential hardware and reboot. loading BIOS defaults might do the trick if you attempted overclocking or if hardware was changed. others will have more ideas, anyway, you have some things to check so good luck...
 
hello panic mode, thanks.
the first image of your last post doesn't work with me, I got this message from the site:
"Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, images@tau5.pair.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log."
:D
 
panic mode said:
if you are talking about 40-pin ATA connector, there is one pin that is missing on purpose - cable that goes there has that pin plugged so one doesn't turn it wrong way (rotate 180deg). it is close to the middle of the connector
**broken link removed**

yeah, I see in this image that there is one pin missing on purpose, it's in the middle at the bottom row of pins.There are two pins under the cable hole there , the second at the bottom doesn't exist and that's exactly what I had with my hard disk.
Am I right? or I might misunderstood your thought!

need more help please, with all my respect!
 
ok here it is (shamelessly ripped from seagate's website)
you can see the missing pin in the middle just opposite from notched cable key... some drives don't have either so one has to be really careful.
 

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panic mode said:
you should also check if your HDD and motherboard have compatibility issues or if there is need for startup delay (some HDDs take longer to spin up to the right speed and until they reach the speed, they don't "work", this is worsened by weak PSU). if this is supported it should be in your motherboard BIOS.

hmm...I remember that the PC was counting for the memory everytime the pc boots and it takes longer time than usual (at least as i know).Is that related to what you say about startup delay?!
 
no. memory check can be set in the bios as "lousy" or "thorough" (this is probably what you see as slow memory count) but this is another issue. startup delay is simply delay that bios waits before passing control to OS on the harddrive (actually MBR) giving more time to HDD to spin up. not all mobos have it so sometimes one can press reset while HDD is accelerating. this way BIOS would restart and HDD is not starting from stand still... such things indicate compatibility issue which is normally resolved by bios upgrade for example. if you are building or upgrading PC, you should first do some research and planing to avoid such situations. if you have more than one PC, you can try swapping thigs out. it is not smart to start experimenting on one and only pc without previous experience or research. if you are doing something of this kind, read the manuals, your mobo manual will be a good start. you can also research net about HDD install. you will find that there are some switches to be set (jumpers) and parameters enterd in the bios. technically one should be able to simply buy bunch of parts and put them together, practically this doesn't always work out even if one does the right thing. there are still issues with "this motherbard and that sound card" or "this motherboard and that HDD" or "this motherbard and that memory".
 
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