Hi there, I recently gave a friend an old hard drive of mine, not knowing that there was something wrong with it. When he tried to boot it up, he got a basic "Operating system not found" so he tried to install windows. After he put the disk in he got a screen telling him the Hard Disk was not found.

We made sure that it was connected properly but got the same error. The screen told us to also try running FDISK and when typing in /fdisk we recieved the message "No fixed disks present".

None of this was really a problem, until he SET up my old HD as the "slave" on his comp. After booting with both my old HD attatched to his, his HD now has the same problems.

Anyone got any clue if this is fixable? I hope we don't have to get him a new drive .

When you hooked up the "bad" one to his they were probably not both jumpered correctly, giving you the error message. Once you REMOVE it, his machine should be fine.

If you get this message and the jumpers are correct AND the drive itself is recognized in the BIOS, then you should probably head to the trash can, unless there is valuable data that you WANT to pay $$$ to retrieve.Actually, with just his drive in the computer we are getting the same error that we got with just my drive. Whatever happened to my old HD, happened to his during the minute or two they were connected.Hard to believe that. Is his drive recognized correctly in the BIOS/setup screen? What computer make and model? Were any jumpers removed in this episode?I'm not at his house now, so all I can tell you is that his PC is a real old HP Pavillion.
I can't even get to bios. All I get is "Operating system not found" regardless of what I do when the comp starts up. Putting in a windows disk just gets me a blue screen telling me that the Hard Disk was not found.
Everything is physically set up correctly.

This makes no sense to me, that's why I'm here looking for help.I'm not at his house now, so all I can tell you is that his PC is a real old HP Pavillion.
I can't even get to bios. All I get is "Operating system not found" regardless of what I do when the comp starts up. Putting in a windows disk just gets me a blue screen telling me that the Hard Disk was not found.
Everything is physically set up correctly.

This makes no sense to me, that's why I'm here looking for help.Sorry about the double post, I'll register so that doesn't happen again  The old HP's used F2 to access the BIOS. Did you try that, or F10? If you can't get there, it may have other problems.Ah, didn't know that part. I'll try it when I go over to his house later tonight. If the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive, any clue what I should do then? He lives pretty far and I want to know what to do before I get there, as he now has no computer to access the internet with  Well you may have to RESET BIOS if something in this aborted attempt has changed the settings beyond what you can adjust.

If this is the CASE you will need to look at the HP website. Hopefully it will be a simple adjustment. I have to take you at your word about the jumpers and nothing else being done.