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bjbrownFlag for United States of America

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Windows 7 won't install, can't find hard drive

I have a system that was recently completely wiped clean due to a virus, now trying to load windows 7 pro but install fails stating that disk drive can't be found. I downloaded the drivers for the storage and tried to load at the prompt during the OS install but still no luck. I do not have a system recovery disk. Suggestions?

Thanks,
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Shane McKeown
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Going to start with the basics - does the BIOS see the drive?

What make/model laptop? Go into BIOS and see if you can see the drive listed...if it is listed see if you can change the mode from AHCI to ATA(or sometimes called Legacy)

If its NOT listed in the BIOS then I guess its a dead drive...
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Have you verified that the disk is still showing up in the system bios?

If it is showing up in the bios but not to the OS installer, I would try connecting the drive to a working PC as a secondary drive to ensure it is working and readable.
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ASKER

BIOS does see the drive, this is a Dell workstation precision T3600. I'm booting from a Windows 7 64 bit ISO.
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Shane McKeown
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Okay, I'll put this question on hold until tomorrow as I'm not in the office currently and will have to examine the system to answer some of the questions. I really appreciate the feed back and apologize for the delay.

I can answer the "where did I get the drivers" question. I pulled these down right from the dell site with the assistance of one of their techs so I'm confident that these are the correct drivers.

To be continued.....
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pierrejeanes

Perhaps you have to turn off raid on bios in order to be rcognized by windows installation.
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Was able to turn RAID on in BIOS and load proper driver to recognize drive, then Windows install was successful.

Thank you all for the suggestions, I'm confident that I will be referring back to these post in the future.