Fixing computer for friend, think I ran into problem.

[YROC]

Friend's computer was totally trashed. Agreed to help him fix it for free as long as he bought the parts. So I got the new dvd burner and hdd installed. I turned it on for the first time to hear a clicking noise. Almost like a clock's ticking. Then while trying to install xp, the computer says there is no recognized HDD. Am I ****ed?

Edit: It doesn't click anymore, but it's still not recognized.

 

[No Limit]

Not sure about the clicking sound. But what was the problem before you got the parts?

Alot of times if you are having hard drive issues the HDD controller on the mobo goes bad. If you motherboard has the ability to do raid you might want to turn that on and see if you can detect the HDD that way since it will use a different HDD. If you do turn on raid sometimes you have to load the raid drivers on a floppy (should be on the cd that came with the mobo) and tell windows to run advanced configuration when it first starts the xp install (f6 I believe). You can also enable or disable ACPI depending on what the current setting is.

 

[Yorick]

First thing I'd try is hooking the harddrive up to another computer to see whether it works in that situation, or you just happened to get a bad one. Assuming it works well there, then No Limit is probably right about the motherboard being the problem.

 

[xcellerate]

If it's a sata drive trying going into the bios and changing the controller from ahci to compatability.

 

[YROC]

But what was the problem before you got the parts?

His computer wouldn't go pass the bios startup. I tried recovering windows there but it said "call manufacturer" or something similar. The computer is from 2005 so i'm sure his warranty for anything is long over. I figured a fresh install of windows would be the ticket, but then the disc drive wouldn't read any discs so that had to be replaced. Then he decided he wanted a larger HDD so I got that aswell.

At one point while trying to install windows (after the clicking had stopped), it just froze and did nothing forever. I pulled the power cable and tried to reboot once more and now it's just a black screen with that. Nothing shows up.

 

[xcellerate]

if it's not even showing the BIOS screen then that narrows it down to about the motherboard, cpu, or ram.

 

[YROC]

Bah, I started it up again and it went to the bios screen. While I was there, I put it to "boot from cd". I booted it and now there's a screen that says "Press any key to boot from cd.....", but nothing happens when I hit a key. :v

EDIT: I did it again and it let me continue when asked to press a key to boot from disc. Now it's installing or something. It's been on "Setup is loading files (Universal Host Controller)..." for a little bit now.

EDIT: 7 hours later it's saying the same thing

 

[Krynn72]

The install failed then, so do this:

First thing I'd try is hooking the harddrive up to another computer to see whether it works in that situation, or you just happened to get a bad one. Assuming it works well there, then No Limit is probably right about the motherboard being the problem.

 

[No Limit]

If the HDD works in another computer it sounds like it's for sure the motherboard. Did you try changing the ahci mode as xcellerate suggested? If that doesn't work do you have a raid controller of some sort you can enable in the bios since that will then use a different HDD controller?