BIOS not recognizing any Drives

[sMcBride424]

My fiance got an HP Pavillion desktop a little over a year ago. He doesn't do online gaming or really much of anything with it. Just e-mail, some Hulu, pictures, work stuff, etc.

Anyway, about a month or so ago...he tried to turn on the computer and got a black screen saying that the drive could not be found. So he thought his HDD was bad...got a new 500G SATA HDD...installed it...same thing.

Tried to boot up using a Windows 7 upgarde disc in the DVD-Rom but BIOS didn't recognize that either. We tried switching out the cables into different SATA ports (he has 6)...and BIOS didn't recognize anything.

We could try getting new SATA cables, but how would 2 SATA cables both randomly get fried?

Could it be a bad motherboard? We're both engineers...though definitely not computer engineers...so we're trying to troubleshoot the best we can. We know enough about the inside of a computer to get by and figure things out, but we are not experts by any means.

This is what we get for not getting an extended warranty! haha. We'd really like to try to fix it ourselves instead of handing it over to GeekSquad or anything.

Any ideas?

[Mister2]

HI sMcBride424, and Welcome to SpywareHammer! ;D

I agree it would be most unusual for both cables to go bad.  Do you get any beeps from the system when you start up?

Before we explore further you might try changing the CMOS battery on the motherboard.  A failing battery can cause problems ranging from the system time and date resetting whenever the computer is switched on to failing to recognise hardware.  I think that would be well worth doing considering the cost (a couple of dollars).

The battery will most likely be a CR 2032 and looks like this:-

.

It should be easily seen when the computer case is removed.  Unplug the system from the power socket first, then press the power button to dissipate any residual charge.  Try not to touch any components or circuit boards while you are changing the battery as these are easily damaged.

Also, make sure you don't get any finger grease on the top or bottom - a sock worn on the hand is a good idea (not the one you are currently wearing though).  The old battery will be held in place by a spring clip - simply ease the clip up until the old battery can be removed and then pop the new one in.

The system should reboot OK, but you may occasionally see some unusual behaviour (time format wrong, trying to boot from the floppy drive and so on).  If that is the case then as long as the system actually boots we can sort that out.

Usually you will hear some sort of warning beep when an error is encountered on start up.  If so, let me know what they are (something like 1 long beep, 3 short beeps).