Solved! Unable to reformat laptop

[gestalt0421]

Hi,

Please help.

I have a laptop that I want to reformat because its acting crazy. Once I connect it to a power supply, it automatically turns itself on even if I don't hit the power on button.

Afterwards, it boots but goes to the screen where you can select to start windows normally, start in safe mode, etc.

If I select start windows normally, the laptop shows a blue screen for around a second so I cant read the message, reboots and repeats the same process

If I select start in safe mode, it lists out errors about a partition in the drive (?)

I tried reformatting the drive but when I got to the part where you can select whether to install a fresh copy of windows xp or repair it, it gives me a message that the hard disk is not found.

I dont know what else to do.

I would really appreaciate your help.

 

[buwish]

It could be that it is suffering from a bad hard drive. However, first you'll want to try and do a recovery. What is the brand of your laptop?

 

[daship]

My vote goes to dead HDD.


I had it happen to me 2 weeks ago, same symptoms.I took out the HDD and hooked in into my desktop and ran diagnostics. She was bad. My ram was bad as well, put in new HDD and ram, now its running good.

 

[gestalt0421]

My laptop is Compaq Presario V300.

My initial thought was that the HDD is dead. But when I tried running the hard diagnostic from BIOS, the result is that the hard disk is in good condition (for both the quick and comprehensive testing).

 

[hang-the-9]

This sounds like more than a drive issue, the laptop should not turn on soon as you connect the power supply, as the battery, if working, would be getting it power.

Can you run the laptop on only the battery? Looks to me like you are having serious motherboard issues with either the power connectors or possibly some damaged componenets. Your laptop looks to be about 4 years old, so all the moving around it does could have easily damaged it enough so it does what you describe.