Windows will detect hard drive but BIOS does not

[tylerdidit]

I've had a good look around but so far all I can see is people with the opposite problem. So, here goes, let's see if anyone's got any light to shed on this.

Basically, this started two nights ago, I was playing Command & Conquer Zero Hour, abandoned it for maybe ten minutes, and when I came back, moving the mouse crashed the game. So when nothing was responding (ctrl alt del did nothing, couldn't get back to windows, everything was totally frozen) I did what I figured was the logical thing and turned the laptop off.

And then it wouldn't turn back on. In the BIOS, it now says that there is no hard drive installed in the SATA port, just a DVD drive and two windows boot managers.

But I can still get onto the hard drive. I can still get the thing to boot up and I am writing from the laptop right now, in fact. (Load BIOS defaults and choose windows 8 to boot up and viola, the laptop is alive again, in spite of the BIOS telling me there is no hard drive installed)...

So, anyone got any ideas? I would like to be able to turn my laptop on and not battle with it. I would also like to downgrade the damn thing but everything I've tried just tells me "well that failed, dumbass, you're stuck with windows 8". But mostly I'd like my laptop to work like a laptop. Pretty please?

(I have a Samsung NP3530ec-A0LDX with windows 8)

 

[lonewolf7]

First check the drive with : http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html for health and performance status. what are the results ?

Second thing, open the back cover of Laptop, pull the HDD/SSD out, then pull out the RAM sticks, after 5 mins put them all back, make sure they all seated properly.

Start the Laptop, go into BIOS, can you see the Drive/s ? If so then you are fine to go, if not, a storm is coming beware.

Note : Do you have the latest BIOS version and latest firmware for HDD/SSD ? Remove the battery and AC cord before you try anything.

 

[tylerdidit]

It says everything's all good. the hard drive seems to be showing up in the bios again (some kind of dark magic? I didn't do anything to it other than grumble at it for dying) It's still not booting properly though.

Also, trying to downgrade to win 7 comes up with the error 0x8030002c saying the partitions are in the wrong order to install, but I can't figure out how to move them around or delete them. Disk Management doesn't really give me any obvious options to change anything. On all but the main partition, I only get the help window option, and on the main one, there is only the option to shrink it. How would I move them around/delete the others? I don't have a bootable dvd of windows (my fault, using the last blank dvd and forgetting to make it bootable) so is there a way around this? I've googled every variation of these questions I can think of, but nothing really gives me the answer that will work.

 

[lonewolf7]

So the good news is its showing under BIOS, that's a relief. Second thing you must have a bootable media to format windows partition(C:\). Disk management cant do that. It is good for formatting other partitions but the OS partition. So you badly need a bootable media.

 

[tylerdidit]

So the good news is its showing under BIOS, that's a relief. Second thing you must have a bootable media to format windows partition(C:\). Disk management cant do that. It is good for formatting other partitions but the OS partition. So you badly need a bootable media.

okidoke, how would I go about formatting it then? It won't let me do it through the windows 7 set up for some reason :/ I feel like such an idiot, but windows 8 genuinely confuses me... I had to google how to get into my files >< not good for the family IT guy hahaha

 

[lonewolf7]

Now here I am getting confused. Just tell me what you exactly want to do ? and what resources do you have in hand right now ?

I will be here for 2 hours.