Hello guys I'm trying to re-install my windows, however my drives aren't showing up on diskpart?

Transcenden04

I have an ACER ASPIRE TC-220 , and my initial issue was that I kept getting the "Reboot and Select a proper boot device" screen. 
After which I decided to re-install my windows, however when I tried to do that my drives weren't showing up - as seen in image 1-. 
After attempting the diskpart procedure they also weren't showing up there after typing in the comment to list the disks, only my USB
flash drive which I was trying to re-install with would show up.
However when I did the diskpart procedure while in windows itself (after having logged in) the disks did show up.
I can now however not get to that stage.
Can you please explain to me why this might be the case and help me fix my problem? 
Many thanks, 

Transcenden04

billsey said:

Once you have the drivers extracted to the flash drive get back to the screen you showed above, where it says "To install the device driver for your drive...". At that point it should automatically see the drivers on your flash drive. If it doesn't see them click on the browse button, find the flash drive and tell it which folder has the drivers. Once it's loaded the driver you should be good to go since the drive will show up.

Thanks for your reply once again, 

I followed your steps however I got the message "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click load driver" 
I'm not sure what this means to be honest.

I've had this whole issue occur to me about a month back, and I stopped using the PC
for about a week, then I turned it on again and it didn't give me the " Please select a proper boot device and Reboot Message" but it just
proceeded to turn on as normal.

Do you think it may be a hardware issue, perhaps the hard drive or the cables connecting to the hard drive aren't performing as well? 

TECH_MAN

Hi 
just follow the instruction 

go to start 
right click on my computer 
click on manage 
then click on storage 
then click on disk management 
then right click on your device and select add letters and path 
window will pop up then click on add 
the select an alphabet and click on ok 

this will solve your prb.... 

Or,

Hard to answer as the problem could be in the Boot loader (ie 3rd partition info clobbered), or the problem could be in the file allocation table (FAT).
Re-installing windows may, or may not restore ability to read this partition. It is also posible that reloading windows may make recovery harder.

I would be inclined to:
1) Using a Bootable CD with a antivires program see if it can check disk.
Problem may, or may not, have been caused by a virus - but worth checking for.
2) try a 3rd party recovery disk such as rgd1101 suggested (others are available just google. If it is in the FAT, recovery programs will check for the backup and retore FAT using the backup FAT.
3) all else fails and you can not recover data (remember when writing to disk you may lose ability to recover). then go for re-installing windows.

Transcenden04

@TECH_MAN
Hey I can't follow those instructions as I can no longer get passed the "Reboot and select a proper boot device"

As for your other steps, what do you mean by "see if it can check disk" with the bootable CD? 

I will attempt the 3rd party recovery disk solution.

Thank you for your reply

billsey

What model do you have? That symptom usually means the drive(s) are in RAID mode and Windows setup needs the drivers to see them. At the Windows Setup screen you captured you need to click load driver with a driver disk either in the ODD or on a flash drive.

TECH_MAN

@Transcenden04

Follow these steps:

1. Insert the original Windows disc.
2. Restart your PC and boot from the disc.
3. Click Repair your computer.
4. Choose the operating system from the list.
5. Click Next.
6. Choose Command Prompt.
7. When it opens, type the command: chkdsk /f /r.
8. Press Enter.

if not  go to BIOS check if your HDD is detected or 

Transcenden04

billsey said:

What model do you have? That symptom usually means the drive(s) are in RAID mode and Windows setup needs the drivers to see them. At the Windows Setup screen you captured you need to click load driver with a driver disk either in the ODD or on a flash drive.

Thanks for your reply,

This is the screen I get, however I don't have a drivers disk, do I have to create one or?

Second screen I get when I try to select my USB installation media- which I imagine doesn't make sense to select.

Transcenden04

TECH_MAN said:

@Transcenden04

Follow these steps:

1. Insert the original Windows disc.
2. Restart your PC and boot from the disc.
3. Click Repair your computer.
4. Choose the operating system from the list.
5. Click Next.
6. Choose Command Prompt.
7. When it opens, type the command: chkdsk /f /r.
8. Press Enter.

if not  go to BIOS check if your HDD is detected or 

Hey, thanks for your reply again

I don't have the original windows disk, however this is the response I got after typing your command, if it helps? 

"The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive. 
Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected. " 

billsey

Yep, you need to download the drivers from the Acer support site and extract to the flash drive. They'll be visible then, though you might have to navigate to the drive in order to see them.

Transcenden04

billsey said:

Yep, you need to download the drivers from the Acer support site and extract to the flash drive. They'll be visible then, though you might have to navigate to the drive in order to see them.

Hello thanks again for your reply,

I was just wondering once I have the drivers from the Acer Website onto my flash drive, what do I actually have to do? 

Do I have to type in a certain command or like you said I somehow have to navigate to the drive, but if my drives aren't showing up I'm not really sure how I would do that? 

billsey

Once you have the drivers extracted to the flash drive get back to the screen you showed above, where it says "To install the device driver for your drive...". At that point it should automatically see the drivers on your flash drive. If it doesn't see them click on the browse button, find the flash drive and tell it which folder has the drivers. Once it's loaded the driver you should be good to go since the drive will show up.

Transcenden04

billsey said:

Once you have the drivers extracted to the flash drive get back to the screen you showed above, where it says "To install the device driver for your drive...". At that point it should automatically see the drivers on your flash drive. If it doesn't see them click on the browse button, find the flash drive and tell it which folder has the drivers. Once it's loaded the driver you should be good to go since the drive will show up.

Thanks for your reply once again, 

I followed your steps however I got the message "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click load driver" 
I'm not sure what this means to be honest.

I've had this whole issue occur to me about a month back, and I stopped using the PC
for about a week, then I turned it on again and it didn't give me the " Please select a proper boot device and Reboot Message" but it just
proceeded to turn on as normal.

Do you think it may be a hardware issue, perhaps the hard drive or the cables connecting to the hard drive aren't performing as well? 

Transcenden04

Hmmmm I've just attempted to re-install the windows on my old PC and I get exactly the same problem where the drives aren't showing up, which makes me think my USB flash drive that I'm using for re-installation, which I got directly from the Microsoft Website, might be the problem? 

billsey

Transcenden04 said:

I followed your steps however I got the message "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click load driver" 
I'm not sure what this means to be honest.

At this point the OS install can't see the HD because those HD drivers haven't yet been loaded. They should be able to be loaded from the USB flash drive you created earlier. Remember that if the drivers you downloaded were in a zip file you need to extract the zip onto your flash drive rather than just copying it over.

Transcenden04 said:

I've had this whole issue occur to me about a month back, and I stopped using the PC
for about a week, then I turned it on again and it didn't give me the " Please select a proper boot device and Reboot Message" but it just
proceeded to turn on as normal.

Do you think it may be a hardware issue, perhaps the hard drive or the cables connecting to the hard drive aren't performing as well? 

It's likely an issue with the hard disk, much less likely a problem with the cables. The easiest thing to fix is what I've been working you toward here, a missing RAID driver from the Windows install. If the driver isn't the problem then the next step will be to diagnose the hard disk itself. Depending on the failure disk problems can be easy or hard to figure out... If it doesn't even spin up it's bad, if it spins up but doesn't communicate on the SATA bus it's bad, if it spins up and communicates on the bus but can't read or write data it's bad. Easier to check the easy stuff first.

Transcenden04

billsey said:

Transcenden04 said:

I followed your steps however I got the message "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click load driver" 
I'm not sure what this means to be honest.

At this point the OS install can't see the HD because those HD drivers haven't yet been loaded. They should be able to be loaded from the USB flash drive you created earlier. Remember that if the drivers you downloaded were in a zip file you need to extract the zip onto your flash drive rather than just copying it over.

Transcenden04 said:

I've had this whole issue occur to me about a month back, and I stopped using the PC
for about a week, then I turned it on again and it didn't give me the " Please select a proper boot device and Reboot Message" but it just
proceeded to turn on as normal.

Do you think it may be a hardware issue, perhaps the hard drive or the cables connecting to the hard drive aren't performing as well? 

It's likely an issue with the hard disk, much less likely a problem with the cables. The easiest thing to fix is what I've been working you toward here, a missing RAID driver from the Windows install. If the driver isn't the problem then the next step will be to diagnose the hard disk itself. Depending on the failure disk problems can be easy or hard to figure out... If it doesn't even spin up it's bad, if it spins up but doesn't communicate on the SATA bus it's bad, if it spins up and communicates on the bus but can't read or write data it's bad. Easier to check the easy stuff first.

Ok lovely stuff, really appreciate this help,

Yeah I did extract them onto the Flash drive however I didn't know if I had to extract all drives or just specific hard drive drivers, because on the acer website you have SATA drivers, and you have VGA drivers, AUDIO drivers etc, the ones I did think were for the Hard drive I extracted and then selected "to load" on that screen after which the screen proceeded to load for a few minutes and then it just gave me the same message again "We couldn't find any drives..." 

I think I might just use a bigger flash drive copy all the drives for my PC model from the acer model onto the flash drive load them , and come back to you. 

billsey

Nah, you should only need SATA or RAID drivers to see the disk. Let's go ahead and start to look at the disk itself, you'll have to open things up for this, and even turn power on while it's open so be careful... Kind of like open heart surgery, but less expensive.

With it powered off and open check the drive connections. You get inside by removing the side panel, two screws, and sliding it back a bit. The drive(s) will be mounted on the back of that plate toward the front of the machine with the cable end toward the back. There should be two cables connected to the drive, a power and a data. Verify the are both solidly seated at the drive and that the data cable is solidly seated at the motherboard.

Once you are sure they are connected well, plug in any things you took off in order to open the case except the side cover and turn the machine on. If the cables were just loose it might boot up. If it doesn't boot reach in a put your finger on the hard disk. You feel a vibration from the platters spinning. Turn the computer off and verify the vibration goes away as the drive spins down. If there's no vibration the drive is likely bad with the motor not spinning up when powered on.

That will take care of the two most likely failures, cabling and drive power up. Let us know the results and we'll take it from there...

Transcenden04

billsey said:

Nah, you should only need SATA or RAID drivers to see the disk. Let's go ahead and start to look at the disk itself, you'll have to open things up for this, and even turn power on while it's open so be careful... Kind of like open heart surgery, but less expensive.

With it powered off and open check the drive connections. You get inside by removing the side panel, two screws, and sliding it back a bit. The drive(s) will be mounted on the back of that plate toward the front of the machine with the cable end toward the back. There should be two cables connected to the drive, a power and a data. Verify the are both solidly seated at the drive and that the data cable is solidly seated at the motherboard.

Once you are sure they are connected well, plug in any things you took off in order to open the case except the side cover and turn the machine on. If the cables were just loose it might boot up. If it doesn't boot reach in a put your finger on the hard disk. You feel a vibration from the platters spinning. Turn the computer off and verify the vibration goes away as the drive spins down. If there's no vibration the drive is likely bad with the motor not spinning up when powered on.

That will take care of the two most likely failures, cabling and drive power up. Let us know the results and we'll take it from there...

Thanks for the reply and the images, so I followed everything you said and there was a lot of dust , but both those cables were very difficult to pull out both at the hard drive and at the mother board so that didn't seem to be an issue, I did pull them out at the mother board and tried to put them into the SATA2 and SATA3 slots at the motherboard just to see if anything different would happen but I just got the same message again " Reboot and Select...".

As for the hard disk itself I checked for the vibrations like you said, and they did come on when the power was on , and go away as I turned the power off so the motor doesn't seem to be the problem either. 

billsey

OK, at least the motor drivers are working then. Do you have access to another desktop computer? You could plug the drive in to a free SATA connector on another computer to see if the drive is visible there. If not the drive is bad, if so your motherboard is the likely culprit.

Transcenden04

billsey said:

OK, at least the motor drivers are working then. Do you have access to another desktop computer? You could plug the drive in to a free SATA connector on another computer to see if the drive is visible there. If not the drive is bad, if so your motherboard is the likely culprit.

Right ok, 

I will use my mates computer and carry this out tomorrow and let you know the results.

Thanks for bearing with me 

Transcenden04

Hi @billsey I've finally got around to connecting the HDD to another computer however I wasn't sure how I would know if it's working or not, it didn't show up on my computer disk/drive management, but I don't know if that tells  me whether it's working or not, the computer I did connect it to had it's original hard drive plugged in too. Any suggestions on what to look for which will tell me whether it's working or not?
Thanks, 

Transcenden04

Also in terms of ordering a hard drive, would you recommend buying the same one or a similar one, or it doesn't really matter? 

billsey

Sounds pretty much like the drive is toast, and not that light brown toast that's good to eat, the black stuff that you just toss in the compost bin. ;(

You can order the same model or a different one with similar specs. Your computer is new enough you don't have to worry about finding a SATA I or II model, you can get the current SATA III and go full speed. You might think about upgrading to an SSD as well, they're getting very price competitive and will be much faster that the regular HD.