Installing Hard Drive

[BlackKnight343]

I bought a new hard drive for my desktop computer. I plugged it into the SATA signal and power cables and it refused to show up in BIOS. After plugging and unplugging in the different SATA ports along with the DVD drive, it finally came up in the BIOS. I then tried installing XP, it started partitioned the hard drive, i left it to do that, came back and it had gone back the partitioning stage again. I did the quick partition option and i then it started copying all the files to the hard drive. 15% through and the computer crashed, saying "NTLDR is missing Ctl + Alt + Del to restart". what do i do? Sometimes after the mobo logo comes up, it says CMOS isnt registering or isnt present or working or something like that (sorry im not specific, sometimes it comes up and sometimes not). Is there a problem with the CMOS battery? its over 5 years old or close to it. Was i supposed to do more than just plug in the hard drive? I have a feeling i've missed something when installing the new hard drive.

Happy to give more info. Please help. I'd hate to see a new hard drive go to waste. It's a HDD 500GB Seagate Barracuda With 8 MB cache, 7200rpm and i think SATA3 3. ASUS M2N-SLI mobo.

Thankyou guys !

 

[WyomingKnott]

If the mobo was doing something useful before, then it's most likely a problem with the hard drive. Were I you, I would
1) Attach the hard drive to another PC and see if it works
2) Download manufacturer's bootable diagnostics, make a boot disk, boot to it, and do diagnostics on the drive.

Most important thing to do is to determine if the problem is in the drive or something else. To state the obvious.

 

[BlackKnight343]

ah thank you. so get the hard drive bootable diagnostics from the manufacturer, put them onto a CD or can it be a USB, and then do the rest

i will give it a try
thankyou very much hopefully it works

 

[StirB]

Why did you need to buy a hard drive in the first place?

 

[BlackKnight343]

Why did you need to buy a hard drive in the first place?

The old HDD started failing after the computer was fixed, it would randomly crash over and over again to a point it would only make it to the windows loading screen and then restart, endless loop. I tried loading xp as it was more suited the computer and it never worked, saying the drive was corrupt and broken. So I bought a new one. I think it may be a dodgy SATA cable because the HDD doesn't always come up in the BIOS. BTW I keep getting CMOS checksum error now, maybe the battery dying crashes the computer?

 

[StirB]

How are you trying to put windows on your machine? From your symptoms I want to say your disk/USB drive may have a bad copy of windows or maybe got damaged some how

 

[BlackKnight343]

Im trying to load windows through the CD/DVD drive, it may be a possibility that the disk is damaged. But would that explain why the hard drive isnt coming up in the BIOS everytime. Recently i tried again and it came up with "NTLDR is missing" this time but would probably be because it booted straight from the HDD which didnt have the OS.