Sick old man Posted September 9, 2011 Report Share Posted September 9, 2011 Hello wonderful Forums of Best Techie,I say wonderful because I was reading throw the forums and y'all seem so dang nice around here... I will introduce myself as a old man with thoughts of youthfulness in my mind...Here is my problem.. I have a MSI laptop, it is running windows 7, 4GB of ram, dual core AMD processor...I was getting hard disk errors and it was frequently shutting down. I took the drive out and tested it with a external encloser. Well it worked.. I took it out and put it back into the laptop and started up the laptop, it did not load windows or anything, said media failure. Well I looked into the bios and it wasn't showing.. I went and bought a brand new 320GB drive (the old one was 250) I put it in and tried to install windows 7..well when I got to the part to choose where to install no disk drives were showing...I went into the bios and it wasn't showing either.. so I put the old one back in and the same thing...Ok.. Here is the fishy part....I did some reading up and decided to do a bios controller reset,.. I unhooked the laptop, took the battery out and let it sit for 10 minutes.. hooked it back up and walla, the drive was showing in the bios and when it asked what to boot from...I restarted with the windows disk in and tried to install. Well I got to the screen to choose where to install again and was no drive showing..I checked the bios and no drive,.... Did the unhooking battery, let set for 10 minutes and all that again, looked in the bios and the drive showed.. restarted and looked in there again and no drive.. im so confused as to what is happening... I would like to think I am about a 5 out of 10 on the knowledge department tinkering around with these things all day but I must admit. This has me baffled..Thanks for your time to look through my mess and trying to figure out what is wrong...Take your time, I'm sure there are other before me, I will patiently wait for some ones knowledge on this and hope for some help..Thanks again and Take Care Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sick old man Posted September 9, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 9, 2011 Just wanted to say I'm off to bed, very late where I am right now.. Going to put my life saver (oxygen mask) on and call it a night..Forgive my ignorance if I don;t get back to you until tomorrow morning... Good Night Y'all Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted September 9, 2011 Report Share Posted September 9, 2011 What model is the MSI laptop? It acts like the Cmos battery is dead and not saving the Bios settings. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sick old man Posted September 9, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 9, 2011 (edited) What model is the MSI laptop? It acts like the Cmos battery is dead and not saving the Bios settings.Well, what a morning.. Woke up, thought to myself...How much of my hair am I going to pull out today....hahaOk, I am going to go to the store now to buy a battery and check it out...Thanks so much for your reply sir.... I will get back to you as soon as I go to the store,... (in a few minutes)The model number is MS 1671 Edited September 9, 2011 by Sick Old Man Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted September 9, 2011 Report Share Posted September 9, 2011 If the Cmos battery doesn't help then I would suspect problems with the motherboard. If that is the case I hope the warranty is still good. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sick old man Posted September 10, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 10, 2011 Hello Sir...Well I did as you suggested and no go.. You must be correct, it must the motherboard. I bought a new battery and it didn't help.. I put it in and started up.. IT moaned and groaned about date and time being set wrong.. I set it, looked and seen the hard disk and the dvd drive was detected, they were..After setting the clock I rebooted and it did the same thing, media check failure etc, looked in the bios and the hard drive and dvd burner was not in there..Unfortunately I don't have a warranty (it is about 2 years old) I guess 1000 dollars out of my pension wasn't enough, they want even more.. I can understand mechanically rotating things to break down but a 2 year old motherboard after spending 1000 on the stinkin thing... I'm very angry and I guess it is no ones fault, this probably happens to 1 and a million laptops and of course, it has to happen to someone with a limited pension.. And so another day fades away...Take Care Sir and I kindly thank you for helping me resolve this issue.I will certainly tell everyone I know about this site...Thanks againS.O.M Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted September 10, 2011 Report Share Posted September 10, 2011 When researching the problem I noticed that motherboard failure was common on the MSI laptops. Many laptops seem to fail due to motherboards or graphics chips no matter what brand. Of course most laptop parts are made by a select few Asian manufacturers. I guess it should be expected with such cheap labor.Both of my laptops are old IBM Thinkpad T42s bought off ebay used. They do what I need them to do and the price was right. Parts are cheap and easy to find plus working on them is quite simple. My 15" T42 even runs Windows 7 very well. They are selling newer T60/61s for less than $300 on ebay. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Pete_C Posted September 14, 2011 Report Share Posted September 14, 2011 By tested the drive, do you mean you ran the drive manufacturers testing software and it reported the drive was OK or just that you tried to see if it was detected and you could see stuff on it? The CMOS battery is on the motherboard in desktops ( a shiney coinlike thing) and on most laptops is accessible behind the RAM or in the hard drive bay (generally smaller wristwatch type batteries). This battery supplies power to retain bios config settings and run the system clock when the computer is turned off. Given that you replaced the drive, and had the same issues I would suspect that there is a problem with the motherboard or power supply. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sick old man Posted September 16, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 16, 2011 Thanks for your time everyone.. I have a new laptop and I hope it works great for me...I really appreciate your comments and trying to help me.. I will tell folks I know about this site..Thank youS.O.M Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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