HP Laptop recognizes hard drive just long enough to install windows

Posted by Joe on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Joe
Published on 2010-04-08T03:24:35Z Indexed on 2010/04/08 3:33 UTC
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notebook

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laptop

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hard-drive

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Windows

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boot

I have an HP laptop, DV6500 (CTO). It refused to boot one day, so I ran some diagnostics (a friend lent me "Hirens Boot Disk", "UBCD" and "PC DR 6"). Everything passed, except for the hdd. I replaced the HDD with a used drive of unknown condition. Installed windows with no problems. Installed the wireless driver, tried to reboot ... no luck.

So I went to Best Buy, bought a brand new Western Digital 320gb HDD. Put it in the machine, installed windows (vista home premium). Installed the wired networking driver. Tried to reboot. No luck.

Put the first hdd back in the machine, reinstalled windows. Started to install some drivers, went to reboot, and the machine won't come back to life.

Put the second hdd in the machine, rinse wash and repeat.

I've replaced the memory, even though it passed diagnostics. Problem exists with both brand new memory, and old memory.

The BIOS recognizes the hard drive. The computer freezes directly after the bios splash screen, and there is no hard drive activity light.

I've tried two linux live distros (gentoo and ubuntu). Neither would run on this laptop, but will on a different HP laptop. UBCD and Hirens Boot Disk both ran, as did PC Doctor 6 which refuses to test anything (gets stuck at "enumerating hard disks").

Is there anything else I can try?

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