Chosen Solution
Daughters laptop suddenly boots to just a bios screen. Well at first it was giving options on a blue screen, like f1 for this f8 for that. But quickly turned into just the bios. Save and exit a few seconds later, back in the bios. It shows the CD-ROM in the SATA drive menu, but not the HDD. Popped the hd into a desktop and it booted and ran fine. So I assumed the next step is to replace the HDD pcb? I think her PC is an Asus f55u
Hi @bryanw20 , According to you the HDD ran OK in the desktop, “Popped the hd into a desktop and it booted and ran fine.” I assume this means that you could access the laptop HDD’s contents when it was installed in the desktop as a secondary drive. The desktop would have detected the new drive and booted off its’ own primary drive. So there should be nothing wrong with the laptop HDD pcb. The HDD is being detected by the desktop PC and is able to be accessed OK. Can you feel/hear the laptop’s HDD spin up when you start the laptop? If not then there is a problem with the power feeding the HDD, either in the connectors or the motherboard. If it spins up OK there may be a problem with the laptop HDD’s MBR or the SATA controller on the motherboard or in the BIOS. Have you got the installation disc for the laptop ? Try booting from that and then select the repair my computer option. Do not select any option relating to reset this PC or install Windows as this will erase your data and reinstall Windows over the top. If you have to reinstall then put the HDD back into the desktop and copy all your data so that you have a backup. Better still do a backup anyway just in case ;-)
