Using laptop HD on desktop, no power felt.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc XYLOPHONE <> wrote:
> Thanks for all your replies.

> The main issue here is to be able to use the laptop. I don't care
> about data on the drive.

Ok, makes things a bit easier.

> To give more clues, here is in more details what I notice.

> - The drive works when I put it back in the laptop.

Good. That means these drives do not get killed by a turned
connector.

> - Booting the laptop with a different drive, known to boot on another
> laptop, gives a blank screen with cursor in top left corner, and
> freezes, probably because wrong BIOS setting since different type/
> brand, but BIOS is not accessible.

That would only happen with a very old BIOS. Today they are typically
set to auto-detect.

> - Booting from floppy or CD fails. BIOS probably bypasses those boots,
> and is not accessible.
> - Booting with the original drive brings XP, but asks for password in
> all cases (safe mode, command line as well).

Strange. Are you sure you cannot access the BIOS? Maybe some
non-standard key combination that is not displayed on bootup?

As you say XP boots, which means the BIOS itself is not damaged.

> So I can't even just get to a DOS prompt, because I once found on
> Internet a way to clear BIOS password using DEBUG commands, in the
> case just a floppy boot would allow to attempt. I did not consider
> opening the laptop and trying to find the CMOS battery or jumper,
> because I don't know exactly where it is and don't want to damage
> anything by accident.

Hmm. It is possible you will have to go that way in the end. But
not yet, I think.

> I'm also puzzled about the adaptor, why no power is felt. I know
> laptop drives are quiet, but I really felt nothing, not even a tiny
> vibration. The adaptor has a 44-hole female end that matches the 44
> pins on the laptop drive. However there are 4 more pins on the laptop
> drive that are not covered by the adaptor, which are separated from
> the rest by a space.

These are for factory testing. Ignore them.

> Since IDE is normally 40 pins, I assume the power
> is already included in the 44-pins covered, and the 4 extra pins (not
> covered by adaptor) are for jumpers.

Yes.

> (Anyways, if this had been power,
> how would I connect since it's not covered by adaptor?).

;-)

> The other end
> of the adaptor gives a standard 40-pin male IDE which is into the IDE
> cable to controller, and there is are extra 2 wires for power that
> lead to a separate white plastic connector that connects to the
> standard large 4-hole power connector.

Fairly standard.

> However only 2 of these are
> wired: the red and the black, as opposed to other desktop devices
> which uses 4 wires for power. I assume it's enough to power the laptop
> drive.

It is not about "enough" power. It is just that at some time
it was decided to have 2.5" drives only use 5V, as that makes
laptop design easier. You pay a small speed penalty for that.
And it makes everything a bit more expensive.

> Again, thanks for any advice on the laptop issue, and the adaptor
> mystery.

Can you check that the power conector is actually working?
One way is to not plug the adapter into the ribbon cable, just
connect the power. The laptop drive should auto-spin then.

On the data connection, you can plug this in frongly in two
places:
- Adapter-to-drive
- Adapter-to-ribbon cable.

The second option would give power to the drive correctly but
would ground several signal lines, which could prevent the drive
from spinning. Doing it wrong on both sides prevents the drive
from getting power, so also no spin.

Incidentially, for some cables (no "nose" on the connector)
you can in addition plug it in in the wrong orientation on the
mainboard side with much the same effect as the second option.

Here is the way to figure out orientation (I know, this
is horribly faultu design...):

1. Find pin 1 on the ribbon cable. It is on the side that
has a marked wire
If that fails, look for the side of the connector that
has a nose in the middle. Pin 1 is left if the nose is up
and the cable side is away from you. If there is no
nose, look carefully, you can often see markings on the
connector where it was supposed to be. The other side will
be smooth.

2. Find pin 1 on your HDD. On most HDDs it is marked.
However the connector is standardized. Place the disk
PCB down, top up with the connector towards you.
Pin 1 is on the right side.

3. The adapter. This is easiest, pin 1 is on the opposite end
from the power connection.

If all is connected right, remove the ribbon cable from the
adapter and just connect power (allways do this with no power
to the computer!) and see whether the disk spins on power up.

If it does, try again with ribbon cable. If not, you power
connector is likely broken somehow.

There will be more steps after this because of the BIOS
trouble, but this is first.

Arno



> On Jul 16, 3:00?pm, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> XYLOPHONE wrote
>>
>> > I'm trying to connect a laptop IDE hard drive onto a PC and read it.
>> > I'm using an IDE laptop to desktop drive adaptor.
>> > I connect this adaptor into the laptop drive's pins, and
>> > then the PCs power connector and IDE cable to it.
>> > I turn on the PC, but hear no power in the drive.
>> > Motor doesn't spin. I hear nothing.
>> > I tried with many laptop drives, and I can't
>> > get the motor spinning on any one of them.
>>
>> That likey indicates that the drives arent getting power.
>>
>> > I tried the connector both ways, so if it's upside
>> > down, it would have worked the other way.
>> > Any idea to read that drive?
>>
>> You do realise that the laptop drive gets its power on the pins on the
>> end of that connector dont you ? ?The 2.5/3.5" adapter shoud have a
>> power connector on pins at the end of the connector and you need to
>> connect that to the PC molex power connector, the nylon 4 pin connector.
>>
>> If you had that initially, you may have killed the drive by connecting it backwards.
>>
>> > The reason why doing this is I've got a laptor with password on Windows,
>> > and password on BIOS. So I want to format the drive with the PC, then
>> > put it back in the laptop, and in some way, clear BIOS password as well.
>>
>> Its rather more complicated than that if the ATA password has been set on the drive.

Trent wrote
> Fred <> wrote

>> Nope, the drives will spin up even when the PC controller is completely dead

> Not always true.

Fraid so when he gets that with multiple laptop drives.

XYLOPHONE wrote

> Thanks for all your replies.

> The main issue here is to be able to use the laptop.
> I don't care about data on the drive.

Still not necessarily all that easy if the drive has an ATA password.

Certainly the ATA password system does allow resetting of the
password with loss of all the data, but it isnt necessarily that
easy to rest that type of password if thats what has been set.

> To give more clues, here is in more details what I notice.

> - The drive works when I put it back in the laptop.

Fine, then you havent killed it.

> - Booting the laptop with a different drive, known to boot on
> another laptop, gives a blank screen with cursor in top left
> corner, and freezes, probably because wrong BIOS setting
> since different type/brand, but BIOS is not accessible.

Nope, more likely thats the result you often get when the motherboard
chipset is different to the one that the OS was installed to use. You should
be able to do a repair install of the OS to get that drive booting in that laptop.

It may well be that access to the bios needs the appropriate
stuff on the hard drive in the maintenance partition and that
isnt there when you are using a drive from a different laptop.

Academic tho as far as being able to use the original laptop drive again.

> - Booting from floppy or CD fails. BIOS probably
> bypasses those boots, and is not accessible.

Likely due to the same problem above.

> - Booting with the original drive brings XP, but asks for
> password in all cases (safe mode, command line as well).

Thats normal and has to be done that way otherwise the password is pretty useless.

You never did say exactly what the laptop is, that info may well be
useful, particularly in deciding whether its using an ATA password
on the drive and how to reset that with loss of data on the drive.

> So I can't even just get to a DOS prompt, because I once found on
> Internet a way to clear BIOS password using DEBUG commands,
> in the case just a floppy boot would allow to attempt.

You sure its for that particular laptop ? Its pretty
unusual for a laptop bios password resetting.

> I did not consider opening the laptop and trying to find the
> CMOS battery or jumper, because I don't know exactly
> where it is and don't want to damage anything by accident.

It can be pretty safe with some laptops and
not even documented on the net with others.

> I'm also puzzled about the adaptor, why no power is felt.

I bet thats crucial, you should be seeing the drive spin up, tho some
laptop drives dont spin up until they get the ATA password. That doesnt
explain why no laptop drive spins up in the desktop tho, the other laptop
drives dont have any password set, so should spin up in the desktop.

I'd concentrate on this because its almost certainly the problem.

> I know laptop drives are quiet, but I really felt nothing, not even a tiny vibration.

Yeah, thats the correct way to check, you should be
able to feel it spin up even if its too quiet to hear.

> The adaptor has a 44-hole female end that matches the 44
> pins on the laptop drive. However there are 4 more pins on the
> laptop drive that are not covered by the adaptor, which are
> separated from the rest by a space. Since IDE is normally 40 pins,
> I assume the power is already included in the 44-pins covered,

Correct.

> and the 4 extra pins (not covered by adaptor) are for jumpers.

Usually correct. What is the drive model number from the sticker on the drive ?

> (Anyways, if this had been power, how would
> I connect since it's not covered by adaptor?).

Also correct.

> The other end of the adaptor gives a standard 40-pin male IDE
> which is into the IDE cable to controller, and there is are extra
> 2 wires for power that lead to a separate white plastic connector
> that connects to the standard large 4-hole power connector.

That last is what I called the molex connector.

> However only 2 of these are wired: the red and the black, as
> opposed to other desktop devices which uses 4 wires for power.

Thats normal. Laptop drives only need 5V, they dont use 12V
which is the other colored wire. The two black wires are ground.

> I assume it's enough to power the laptop drive.

Should be, but all the evidence suggests that the laptop drives arent
getting any power since none of them spin up when used on that adapter.

> Again, thanks for any advice on the laptop issue, and the adaptor mystery.

Its possible the adapter power wires are miswired if you havent used it successfully before.

Its more common for the problem to be with the pins in the white molex connector,
which holes the pins have been put in. They should be in the holes that match with
the red and black wires in the molex connector in the desktop system.

The pin useage of the 44 pin connector is here
http://pinouts.ru/HD/Ata44Internal_pinout.shtml

One possibility is that the 5V line needs to be connected to two pins in the 44 pin connector,
both pins 41 and 42. Its possible its only connected to one of them in the adapter.


> On Jul 16, 3:00 pm, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> XYLOPHONE wrote
>>
>>> I'm trying to connect a laptop IDE hard drive onto a PC and read it.
>>> I'm using an IDE laptop to desktop drive adaptor.
>>> I connect this adaptor into the laptop drive's pins, and
>>> then the PCs power connector and IDE cable to it.
>>> I turn on the PC, but hear no power in the drive.
>>> Motor doesn't spin. I hear nothing.
>>> I tried with many laptop drives, and I can't
>>> get the motor spinning on any one of them.
>>
>> That likey indicates that the drives arent getting power.
>>
>>> I tried the connector both ways, so if it's upside
>>> down, it would have worked the other way.
>>> Any idea to read that drive?
>>
>> You do realise that the laptop drive gets its power on the pins on
>> the
>> end of that connector dont you ? The 2.5/3.5" adapter shoud have a
>> power connector on pins at the end of the connector and you need to
>> connect that to the PC molex power connector, the nylon 4 pin
>> connector.
>>
>> If you had that initially, you may have killed the drive by
>> connecting it backwards.
>>
>>> The reason why doing this is I've got a laptor with password on
>>> Windows, and password on BIOS. So I want to format the drive with
>>> the PC, then put it back in the laptop, and in some way, clear BIOS
>>> password as well.
>>
>> Its rather more complicated than that if the ATA password has been
>> set on the drive.

Arno wrote:
> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Trent <.****off> wrote:
>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:00:01 +1000 "Fred" <> wrote in
>> Message id: <>:
>
>>> Nope, the drives will spin up even when the PC controller is
>>> completely dead
>
>> Not always true.
>
> Well, when it is completely dead, then yes. But these things never
> die completely and often assert some funky signals like a permanent
> reset.

That possibility can be eliminated by unplugging the ribbon
cable from the adapter but still leaving the power connected.

Arno wrote:
> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc XYLOPHONE <>
> wrote:
>> Thanks for all your replies.
>
>> The main issue here is to be able to use the laptop. I don't care
>> about data on the drive.
>
> Ok, makes things a bit easier.
>
>> To give more clues, here is in more details what I notice.
>
>> - The drive works when I put it back in the laptop.
>
> Good. That means these drives do not get killed by a turned
> connector.
>
>> - Booting the laptop with a different drive, known to boot on another
>> laptop, gives a blank screen with cursor in top left corner, and
>> freezes, probably because wrong BIOS setting since different type/
>> brand, but BIOS is not accessible.
>
> That would only happen with a very old BIOS. Today they are typically
> set to auto-detect.

Thats not correct. You will get exactly that symptom with XP when the
motherboard chipset is different enough to the one which XP was installed
for, because the boot cant see the drive properly and so cant boot XP.

The fix for that is a repair install of XP.

>> - Booting from floppy or CD fails. BIOS probably bypasses those
>> boots, and is not accessible.
>> - Booting with the original drive brings XP, but asks for password in
>> all cases (safe mode, command line as well).

> Strange. Are you sure you cannot access the BIOS? Maybe some
> non-standard key combination that is not displayed on bootup?

Or the bios screen uses stuff off the laptop drive and that isnt there
when its a drive out of a different laptop. Thats pretty common.

> As you say XP boots, which means the BIOS itself is not damaged.

Yes, but with a drive from a different laptop, it may well not have
what it needs to show the bios config stuff for a floppy or CD boot.

>> So I can't even just get to a DOS prompt, because I once found on
>> Internet a way to clear BIOS password using DEBUG commands, in the
>> case just a floppy boot would allow to attempt. I did not consider
>> opening the laptop and trying to find the CMOS battery or jumper,
>> because I don't know exactly where it is and don't want to damage
>> anything by accident.
>
> Hmm. It is possible you will have to go that way in the end. But
> not yet, I think.

It might be a good way to reset the password and have the
drive wipe itself if its got an ATA password set in the drive.

>> I'm also puzzled about the adaptor, why no power is felt. I know
>> laptop drives are quiet, but I really felt nothing, not even a tiny
>> vibration. The adaptor has a 44-hole female end that matches the 44
>> pins on the laptop drive. However there are 4 more pins on the laptop
>> drive that are not covered by the adaptor, which are separated from
>> the rest by a space.

> These are for factory testing. Ignore them.

Not always true. Quite a few laptop drives do have normal jumpers too.

>> Since IDE is normally 40 pins, I assume the power
>> is already included in the 44-pins covered, and the 4 extra pins (not
>> covered by adaptor) are for jumpers.
>
> Yes.
>
>> (Anyways, if this had been power,
>> how would I connect since it's not covered by adaptor?).
>
> ;-)
>
>> The other end
>> of the adaptor gives a standard 40-pin male IDE which is into the IDE
>> cable to controller, and there is are extra 2 wires for power that
>> lead to a separate white plastic connector that connects to the
>> standard large 4-hole power connector.
>
> Fairly standard.
>
>> However only 2 of these are
>> wired: the red and the black, as opposed to other desktop devices
>> which uses 4 wires for power. I assume it's enough to power the
>> laptop drive.
>
> It is not about "enough" power. It is just that at some time
> it was decided to have 2.5" drives only use 5V, as that makes
> laptop design easier. You pay a small speed penalty for that.
> And it makes everything a bit more expensive.
>
>> Again, thanks for any advice on the laptop issue, and the adaptor
>> mystery.
>
> Can you check that the power conector is actually working?
> One way is to not plug the adapter into the ribbon cable, just
> connect the power. The laptop drive should auto-spin then.
>
> On the data connection, you can plug this in frongly in two
> places:
> - Adapter-to-drive
> - Adapter-to-ribbon cable.
>
> The second option would give power to the drive correctly but
> would ground several signal lines, which could prevent the drive
> from spinning. Doing it wrong on both sides prevents the drive
> from getting power, so also no spin.
>
> Incidentially, for some cables (no "nose" on the connector)
> you can in addition plug it in in the wrong orientation on the
> mainboard side with much the same effect as the second option.
>
> Here is the way to figure out orientation (I know, this
> is horribly faultu design...):
>
> 1. Find pin 1 on the ribbon cable. It is on the side that
> has a marked wire
> If that fails, look for the side of the connector that
> has a nose in the middle. Pin 1 is left if the nose is up
> and the cable side is away from you. If there is no
> nose, look carefully, you can often see markings on the
> connector where it was supposed to be. The other side will
> be smooth.
>
> 2. Find pin 1 on your HDD. On most HDDs it is marked.
> However the connector is standardized. Place the disk
> PCB down, top up with the connector towards you.
> Pin 1 is on the right side.
>
> 3. The adapter. This is easiest, pin 1 is on the opposite end
> from the power connection.
>
> If all is connected right, remove the ribbon cable from the
> adapter and just connect power (allways do this with no power
> to the computer!) and see whether the disk spins on power up.
>
> If it does, try again with ribbon cable. If not, you power
> connector is likely broken somehow.
>
> There will be more steps after this because of the BIOS
> trouble, but this is first.
>
> Arno
>
>
>
>> On Jul 16, 3:00?pm, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> XYLOPHONE wrote
>>>
>>>> I'm trying to connect a laptop IDE hard drive onto a PC and read
>>>> it. I'm using an IDE laptop to desktop drive adaptor.
>>>> I connect this adaptor into the laptop drive's pins, and
>>>> then the PCs power connector and IDE cable to it.
>>>> I turn on the PC, but hear no power in the drive.
>>>> Motor doesn't spin. I hear nothing.
>>>> I tried with many laptop drives, and I can't
>>>> get the motor spinning on any one of them.
>>>
>>> That likey indicates that the drives arent getting power.
>>>
>>>> I tried the connector both ways, so if it's upside
>>>> down, it would have worked the other way.
>>>> Any idea to read that drive?
>>>
>>> You do realise that the laptop drive gets its power on the pins on
>>> the
>>> end of that connector dont you ? ?The 2.5/3.5" adapter shoud have a
>>> power connector on pins at the end of the connector and you need to
>>> connect that to the PC molex power connector, the nylon 4 pin
>>> connector.
>>>
>>> If you had that initially, you may have killed the drive by
>>> connecting it backwards.
>>>
>>>> The reason why doing this is I've got a laptor with password on
>>>> Windows, and password on BIOS. So I want to format the drive with
>>>> the PC, then put it back in the laptop, and in some way, clear
>>>> BIOS password as well.
>>>
>>> Its rather more complicated than that if the ATA password has been
>>> set on the drive.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Fred <> wrote:
> Arno wrote:
>> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc XYLOPHONE <>
>> wrote:
>>> Thanks for all your replies.
>>
>>> The main issue here is to be able to use the laptop. I don't care
>>> about data on the drive.
>>
>> Ok, makes things a bit easier.
>>
>>> To give more clues, here is in more details what I notice.
>>
>>> - The drive works when I put it back in the laptop.
>>
>> Good. That means these drives do not get killed by a turned
>> connector.
>>
>>> - Booting the laptop with a different drive, known to boot on another
>>> laptop, gives a blank screen with cursor in top left corner, and
>>> freezes, probably because wrong BIOS setting since different type/
>>> brand, but BIOS is not accessible.
>>
>> That would only happen with a very old BIOS. Today they are typically
>> set to auto-detect.

> Thats not correct. You will get exactly that symptom with XP when the
> motherboard chipset is different enough to the one which XP was installed
> for, because the boot cant see the drive properly and so cant boot XP.

> The fix for that is a repair install of XP.

Natually I assume the freeze is before the BIOS completes its
run.

>>> - Booting from floppy or CD fails. BIOS probably bypasses those
>>> boots, and is not accessible.
>>> - Booting with the original drive brings XP, but asks for password in
>>> all cases (safe mode, command line as well).

>> Strange. Are you sure you cannot access the BIOS? Maybe some
>> non-standard key combination that is not displayed on bootup?

> Or the bios screen uses stuff off the laptop drive and that isnt there
> when its a drive out of a different laptop. Thats pretty common.

That sounds like utter nonsense and I have never heard of such a
thing. Proof or reference please.

>> As you say XP boots, which means the BIOS itself is not damaged.

> Yes, but with a drive from a different laptop, it may well not have
> what it needs to show the bios config stuff for a floppy or CD boot.

See above.
Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Fred <> wrote:
> Arno wrote:
>> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Trent <.****off> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:00:01 +1000 "Fred" <> wrote in
>>> Message id: <>:
>>
>>>> Nope, the drives will spin up even when the PC controller is
>>>> completely dead
>>
>>> Not always true.
>>
>> Well, when it is completely dead, then yes. But these things never
>> die completely and often assert some funky signals like a permanent
>> reset.

> That possibility can be eliminated by unplugging the ribbon
> cable from the adapter but still leaving the power connected.

.... which I have suggested some postings before but the OP has
not yet reported results on this.

Arno

Arno wrote:
> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Fred <> wrote:
>> Arno wrote:
>>> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc XYLOPHONE <>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Thanks for all your replies.
>>>
>>>> The main issue here is to be able to use the laptop. I don't care
>>>> about data on the drive.
>>>
>>> Ok, makes things a bit easier.
>>>
>>>> To give more clues, here is in more details what I notice.
>>>
>>>> - The drive works when I put it back in the laptop.
>>>
>>> Good. That means these drives do not get killed by a turned
>>> connector.
>>>
>>>> - Booting the laptop with a different drive, known to boot on
>>>> another laptop, gives a blank screen with cursor in top left
>>>> corner, and freezes, probably because wrong BIOS setting since
>>>> different type/ brand, but BIOS is not accessible.
>>>
>>> That would only happen with a very old BIOS. Today they are
>>> typically set to auto-detect.
>
>> Thats not correct. You will get exactly that symptom with XP when the
>> motherboard chipset is different enough to the one which XP was
>> installed for, because the boot cant see the drive properly and so
>> cant boot XP.
>
>> The fix for that is a repair install of XP.
>
> Natually I assume the freeze is before the BIOS completes its run.

Bad assumption. You dont necessarily get anything visible with a laptop bios.

>>>> - Booting from floppy or CD fails. BIOS probably bypasses those
>>>> boots, and is not accessible.
>>>> - Booting with the original drive brings XP, but asks for password
>>>> in all cases (safe mode, command line as well).
>
>>> Strange. Are you sure you cannot access the BIOS? Maybe some
>>> non-standard key combination that is not displayed on bootup?
>
>> Or the bios screen uses stuff off the laptop drive and that isnt
>> there when its a drive out of a different laptop. Thats pretty
>> common.

> That sounds like utter nonsense

Then you need to get your ears tested, bad.

> and I have never heard of such a thing.

Then you need to get out more.

> Proof or reference please.

Any decent maintenance manual of a laptop that does it like that.

>>> As you say XP boots, which means the BIOS itself is not damaged.
>
>> Yes, but with a drive from a different laptop, it may well not have
>> what it needs to show the bios config stuff for a floppy or CD boot.

> See above.

See above. Its done like that so the menu stuff is much more configurable.

Arno wrote:
> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Fred <> wrote:
>> Arno wrote:
>>> In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Trent <.****off>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:00:01 +1000 "Fred" <> wrote
>>>> in Message id: <>:
>>>
>>>>> Nope, the drives will spin up even when the PC controller is
>>>>> completely dead
>>>
>>>> Not always true.
>>>
>>> Well, when it is completely dead, then yes. But these things never
>>> die completely and often assert some funky signals like a permanent
>>> reset.
>
>> That possibility can be eliminated by unplugging the ribbon
>> cable from the adapter but still leaving the power connected.
>
> ... which I have suggested some postings before

No you didnt until much later.

> but the OP has not yet reported results on this.

He's only posted twice so far.

Ato_Zee wrote:
> Fred <> wrote
>> Arno wrote
>>> Fred <> wrote
>>>> Arno wrote
>>>>> XYLOPHONE <> wrote

>>>>>> Thanks for all your replies.

>>>>>> The main issue here is to be able to use the laptop.
>>>>>> I don't care about data on the drive.

>>>>> Ok, makes things a bit easier.

>>>>>> To give more clues, here is in more details what I notice.

>>>>>> - The drive works when I put it back in the laptop.

>>>>> Good. That means these drives do not get killed by a turned connector.

>>>>>> - Booting the laptop with a different drive, known to boot on
>>>>>> another laptop, gives a blank screen with cursor in top left
>>>>>> corner, and freezes, probably because wrong BIOS setting since
>>>>>> different type/ brand, but BIOS is not accessible.

>>>>> That would only happen with a very old BIOS.
>>>>> Today they are typically set to auto-detect.

>>>> Thats not correct. You will get exactly that symptom with XP when the
>>>> motherboard chipset is different enough to the one which XP was
>>>> installed for, because the boot cant see the drive properly and so
>>>> cant boot XP.

>>>> The fix for that is a repair install of XP.

>>> Natually I assume the freeze is before the BIOS completes its run.

>> Bad assumption. You dont necessarily get anything visible with a laptop bios.

>>>>>> - Booting from floppy or CD fails. BIOS probably bypasses those
>>>>>> boots, and is not accessible.
>>>>>> - Booting with the original drive brings XP, but asks for password
>>>>>> in all cases (safe mode, command line as well).

>>>>> Strange. Are you sure you cannot access the BIOS? Maybe some
>>>>> non-standard key combination that is not displayed on bootup?

>>>> Or the bios screen uses stuff off the laptop drive and that isnt
>>>> there when its a drive out of a different laptop. Thats pretty
>>>> common.

>>> That sounds like utter nonsense

> You can, with most motherboards, build on a benchtop

We arent talking about a benchtop, we are talking about a laptop.

There are few laptops with hard drives that dont have a maintenance/bios
partition on the hard drive and so it makes sense to do the bios menu stuff
on that partition where there's a lot more space for a decent UI etc.

> with no drives, and still access BIOS. The BIOS reports the fitted
> RAM, and at the end of its self test, the BIOS reports
> "No system found".

Laptops do that differently.

> Could we have the make and model of the laptop?
> Some BIOS's do not use the usual DEL key to access the BIOS screen.
> I suspect some mfrs try to deter users from fiddling
> with the BIOS settings, and do this by choosing
> an unusual key combination to access BIOS.

And some dont show the user anything boot option wise if the hard drive
is missing or unrecognised because its a drive out of a different laptop.