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Hard Drive only boots on second try
A few moths ago I replaced the hard drive in my 8600 Inspiron laptop. Shortly after it was installed, the first time I boot in the morning it can't find the hard drive. If I go to F2 it says the Primary hard drive is "None". If I hit F1 it continues to fail finding a Hard Drive. If I press the power button and wait for the screen to go dark and the power light to turn off then press the power button again it boots normally. If I then do a restart and go to setup, it says the Primary Drive is "137 gb." As long as the machine is warm and I do a reboot it works fine. If I let it cool down completely it will fail when I start it again.
Any I deas on why it thinks there is no Hard Drive when I do a cold start up and why it would then see the hard drive after it is powered down and then powered back up again. This has been going on for several months.
Regards,
Mike
I ran the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics and there were no errors.
It's strange that Dell does not list this drive as compatable with my laptop. When I replaced the drive approximately a year ago they were selling the 160 as an upgrade drive for the 8600.
I don't know much about BIOS, but why would it not recognize the drive on the initial boot try, and then if the loptop is powered off and then immediately powered on it recognizes it every time? It seems to not see it as a 160 GB but as a 137GB when it actually boots.
Mike
Here is a link that refers to information by Dell at the time
ejn63
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Posted August 25th, 2009 15:00
How large a drive did you install?