hard disk is being detected but not appearing in boot order

[geniusmuslim]

hey;
this is MNA. from Pakistan. i am new here and its my first post
as my problem is concerned;
i have p4 2.67 GHz intel pentium processor with intel 915GAV intel board. i have 80GB sata Mextor hardisk.
yesterday i accidently tuned off computer without shutting down.
when restarted, error no. 108 was appeared at the screen and hardisk was not
functioning.
in the bios, hardisk is being detected while in Device configuraion but not appearing in boot order.
may i know what may be the problem
please help me
i was using windows XP during that time.
ok looking you forward

[smig]

welcome to the forum.

my guess it lost it's MBR and partition information.
but first make sure all wires are firmly connected.

[Basard]

well, stick your windowsn xp cd in the cd drive, and boot from that.... when asked, choose "repair" it will give u a prompt at some point, i think the command is "fixmbr" (it might not be) try that out and see what happens.

if that doesnt work, go back into repair mode and type "help" there are a lot of commands, i dont remember what any of them are really, but i know they fix stuff....

if all else fails, you can save yourself a lot of time and jsut reinstall windows.... that fixes everything and only takes 30 mins if youre using XP...

[imperialreign]

check in BIOS if you can set the hard disk priority to primary; if you don't have that option, check the hard disk configuration if you can access it for anything unusual.

if you can boot from the WIN CD, but it can't find any windows operating system installed, it's possible the boot partition of the hard disk was corrupted;

you might want to also consider reseting CMOS and loading default BIOS configuration - you can do this by turning all power off, and turning off the switch on the power supply (or unplugging the computer), then remove the CMOS battery on the motherboard. Wait 15min (1 hour if you really want to be sure), reinstall the battery, and power everything back on. BIOS will then load default values and have to redetect your hardware.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by smig

welcome to the forum.

my guess it lost it's MBR and partition information.
but first make sure all wires are firmly connected.

It should appear in the boot other no matter what's on it. MBR and partitions have nothing to do with that. Though I also doubt it actually died. Cables shouldn't disconnect by turning the machine off, however he did not mention how his "accident' happened, perhaps he kicked the machine (I've done so before). Checking cables is a good idea in that case. Otherwise I would first test the disk on a USB convert if possible, see if it at least works.