I have a Dell Inspiron 1564 laptop. my harddisk partitions are not visible when i try to install OS.  In the BIOS the HDD size is 10GB only. But my laptop had 320GB.       on boot it shows:     PXE ROM "Media test Failure- Check cable"   Operating system not found.        on running dell diagnostics it shows:        Hard Drive DST Short Test - Test Results: Not Applicable.   Also, If i insert a live cd, the partitions i had are not visible. When i am trying to install a new copy of OS, there is no partition to select.
18504
My computer no longer boots Windows or the installed operating system. Instead, I may get this error:  PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable -or- Check cable connection!  PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.   and/or one of the following messages or similar:  Operating System not found  No boot device available- No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility  No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key  No Boot Device Found. Press any key to reboot the machine  Default Boot Device Missing or Boot Failed  Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device   What does this mean and what can I do?     This question comes up often and the answers are usually the same. This post is meant to provide a definitive, canonical answer for this problem. Feel free to edit the answer to add additional details.
115675
I have Dell Power Edge R210 ii with RAID 1 implemented (2 x 1TB) and windows server 2008 R2. My server got some hardware issues which is not booting and I tried to connect hard drives to a windows 10 system as external and there both of hard drives are detected but cant access them and also their partition is not listed as well. Any way to access the data of these hard drives?
23983
I purchased a laptop with with Windows 7. The OEM did not provide the disc, but there is a Windows installation with a recovery partition. The Windows 7 machine has not been setup or activated.  I need to install a different operating system for testing. Installing the new operating system side-by-side will cause more trouble than its are worth, so I am going to install the new operating system over Windows 7. That is, I am going to "blow out" the existing Windows 7 installation.  Later, I may want to be able to revert to Windows 7. My question is, how do I backup the current Windows 7 installation, without setup or activation, so I can use it again in the future, if desired?    Many existing questions and answers, like ,  and , presume the machine is setup. (I don't have an HP but I expect the process is similar).  I am trying to avoid the setup process because I want the "cleanest" untainted image as possible.    And so I am clear on what I am asking: I am looking for specific instructions, and not vague advice. For example, call out a tool you have used, and provide the two or three steps needed.  Sorry about this item. Without it, its seems like (1) the question could be vague or broad; and (2) I might create a useless backup image that does not restore (and I won't find out until sometime in the future). And testing a broken backup image will blow out things without a way to restore.
25626
Is Dell pre-installed Ubuntu the same as the general release? Or does the Dell pre-installed version have special Dell drivers etc?  I bought a Dell XPS 9730 with 16.04 which I replaced with 18.04. It is working fine (except suspend-on-close doesn't really suspend but that seems to be a known problem). I am just wondering if I need to look out for a Dell-special 18.04 when Dell finally start shipping it, or do they just ship the standard version of Ubuntu? (The XPS 13 is one of Dell's "Canonical approved" machines.)  Output of fdisk -l (all the 'loop's are snap apps but each app appears twice in lsblk, but that is the subject of another Question!):     Disk /dev/loop0: 3.7 MiB, 3813376 bytes, 7448 sectors Units: sectors   of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512   bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop1: 86.6 MiB, 90812416 bytes, 177368 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop2: 21 MiB, 22003712 bytes, 42976 sectors Units: sectors   of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512   bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop3: 12.2 MiB, 12804096 bytes, 25008 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop4: 140 MiB, 146841600 bytes, 286800 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop5: 2.3 MiB, 2428928 bytes, 4744 sectors Units: sectors   of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512   bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop6: 140 MiB, 146841600 bytes, 286800 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop7: 86.6 MiB, 90759168 bytes, 177264 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 953.9 GiB, 1024209543168 bytes, 2000409264 sectors   Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical):   512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512   bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier:   81530E63-3D66-4216-8090-8DA401ADA1B5      Device           Start        End    Sectors   Size Type   /dev/nvme0n1p1    2048    1050623    1048576   512M EFI System   /dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624 2000408575 1999357952 953.4G Linux filesystem      Disk /dev/loop8: 1.6 MiB, 1691648 bytes, 3304 sectors Units: sectors   of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512   bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop9: 13 MiB, 13594624 bytes, 26552 sectors Units: sectors   of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512   bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop10: 86.6 MiB, 90828800 bytes, 177400 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop11: 3.3 MiB, 3411968 bytes, 6664 sectors Units: sectors   of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512   bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop12: 139.5 MiB, 146276352 bytes, 285696 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes      Disk /dev/loop13: 21.6 MiB, 22609920 bytes, 44160 sectors Units:   sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512   bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
73596
My son's laptop was failing for the second time, so he decided to erase the hard drive and try to install Windows 8.1 back onto it, but it doesn't install. My error message (as shown in the photo) is:   We couldn't install Windows in the location you chose.   Please check your media drive. Here's more info about what happened: 0x8007045d.
32399
I have a Win7 laptop with a 750Gig C: drive.  It came partitioned with 714Gig usable from manufacturer.  I installed programs, music files, etc up to 285 gigs.  As of a few weeks ago it showed 285 Gigs.  Two weeks of house guests later and it shows HD is full.  I deleted some files but it still shows 652 Gigs on this drive while there are only 285 Gigs on drive.  Relevant details:   I am Administrator on laptop and have fair knowledge of what I am doing. I did not restore from backup, restore from mirror, upgrade HD's or anything else that would have touched the partition structure.  Just daily use as imaging machine and web. I have checked partitions under disk administrator - no change, still partitioned with 714Gigs usable. Have looked through computer C drive by hand showing Hidden files and folders - no change. I have used JDisk Report to double check - it shows I have only 285 Gigs on C drive. I triple checked with TreeSize run as Administrator and it also shows 285 Gigs on C drive - yet Windows 7 still shows almost full. I used Windows 7 Utilities to Check for Disk Errors, and Defragged the drive.  No errors shown and no change after Defrag.
28835
What is the best way to access a laptop's hard drive to recover data (assuming there is still intact data) when the OS (Windows XP) won't boot?  EDIT: I've tried booting from a disc, but that failed as well.
95888
I installed Windows 10 on my Dell Precision T5400 a little over a week ago. It is a pretty old computer but it has two physical 4 core xeon processors, 32GB of Ram and a Crucial 525GB SSD. It is very speedy once it gets booted up and I have been using it for doing video editing and playing around with the new linux subsystem built in. The lengthy boot time is very inconvenient though. When installing it took forever to boot and each subsequent time has taken forever to boot. I actually thought it was just installing updates the first few times. I recently started trying to diagnose and repair the problem and I have only been able to narrow the excessive boot time down to the pre session init phase. I would also note that it takes just as long to do a safe mode boot without networking. I downloaded and installed the performance recorder tools but beyond seeing that it is something in the pre session init phase I am at loss as to what to do next. If someone could help steer me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate. I am unsure how to post the logs in this post but I will be glad to with some instruction. Thanks again in advance.
47127
I've recently bought a Dell Inspiron 3650, and would like to clone the disk onto a samsung SSD I have bought for it, in order to speed up boot times etc.  Samsung provide a clone tool called "Samsung data migration", which I've had success with in the past for cloning a system from a HDD to SSD.  Having tried it on the dell, the disk is not bootable, Leaving me with an error that no bootable media can be found. I've tried using a recovery usb to fix any boot system errors, but this fails with an error.  Booting into windows on the old HDD, the system recognises the disks have the same ID and disables the SSD, so it looks like the clone was successful.  I've tried disabling secure boot in the bios and then doing the clone, but this doesn't make a difference.  What else should I try? The system has Windows 10 home installed and is brand new, straight out of the box.
78743
I'm asking this because my HDD (Hard Disk) has 5 years, and ultimately (this year) it gave me many headaches. Many moths ago I has Windows 7 (and 10 T.P. since april) and all was good. But after a moment, instantly, all gets reversed: veeery slow, and actions which will take a tiny time, at these moment the time seems frozen (for example, instead a 1 minute boot, it turned to 5-8 minutes boot). I formatted and installed Windows every 2 months because it was the time which runs good before it gets slooww. Seeing the abuse of privacity in W10, I changed to Ubuntu 15.04 and the things lasted more in time... But again, HDD error. Click, trying to read, click, trying to read... And the upper bar (title of window/buttons of volume, language, wifi, etc.) disappeared. The left bar (where are the app's icons) was empty and the file explorer said the resource wasn't available (or something like these error). I restarted and nothing happens. I had to press CTRL+D to boot-up Ubuntu, but after hours... the same error (can't do anything except moving the mouse/cursor).  Welcome to the routine: copy files with live-cd to a pendrive, wipe HDD and install all again. And the things was calmed again... and the errors comes again. And after 2 weeks, I had to do the same. Now my PC works fine, but yesterday I heard a few "clicks" from the HDD.  Now, I remembered this  and I came to Disks and the HDD shows a new value; normally, the problematic number was "pending sectors", always changing, but now, in "irrecoverable sectors", the number is different of zero.  I never had "reallocated sectors". Now, neither. And now, while I write this lines, I've 5 "pending s." and 9 "irrecoverable s.". If this helps, the "read error rate" is 42, 5 for "write error rate".      Very well!! While I was writing "write error rate", I heard 2   clicks. And while writing this, one click more.   And 123 "CRC error rate". So, with this information: is my HDD dying? It'll last days or months? I think this problem will kill the disk in a not very far time.  The drive is a Western Digital Green 1TB-WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 (80.00A80) S.N.: WD-WCAV5J301610  PS: When I boot with CTRL+D, many times the system is in "RO mode"; I can't save/download files, Unity doesn't find apps when I write their name {click again, now, while I write the text} and, after a few hours, a crash like the lines above
41657
This morning I went to turn on a family member's laptop to find the SMART message displaying that the laptop's hard disk is close to failure and needs replacing.   The laptop is around 2 years old now and I have now backed everything up just in case of this 'imminent' failure.   I ran the HDTune programme to test the amount of damaged blocks there are in the hard disk.  This resulted in 24/2500 blocks (1%)  To me, (someone who doesn't know a great deal about computer hardware) this doesn't seem like a very large amount and I am not entirely sure where to go from here.   Shall I just suggest to immediately buy a new hard drive for the laptop as this one will just keep on deteriorating?  Or, as everything is now backed up, keep on using the laptop until the inevitable happens which could be; days, weeks or months, as this laptop isn't really used for anything majorly important?  Thanks in advance,  JD
56447
I tried to start up my computer and got a flashing file with a question mark.  So I held down the ⌥-key on boot and brought it into recovery-mode.  After going through the different options I went to the disk utility and all I see is the grayed out SuperDrive and below there is disk0 and Mac OS X Base system.   Leaving disk utility I went to reinstall Mac OS X. After the verification and agreeing the terms, it doesn't show my harddrive.   Did I unmount the harddrive or what could the reason it's not showing up?
103380
I have a 500 GB HDD in my laptop, but when I add up the partitions, they take up 465GB, and there are no unallocated spaces anywhere. Where did that 35GB go?  This is what my HDD looks like in the Windows partition manager:    As you can see, the space used is 0.6 + 0.3 + 409.19 + 37.25 + 2.79 + 15.53 = 465.66GB. On the left, Windows does indeed report the size of the drive as being 465 GB, but I know for a fact that this is a 500GB HDD, unless Newegg, Ebay and Amazon all made mistakes. Can someone please help me get back the 35GB I'm entitled to?   Note: I do know that the HDD has 7 partitions, even if only 6 are shown. The one that you can't see is Microsoft Reserved, and is very small, so that's not what is missing.
103185
I'm trying to install Ubuntu 12.10 alongside Windows 7 on my ASUS laptop and I'm new to all of this.   I'm using  the Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit ISO burned onto a CD.  The first time I tried to install it, Ubuntu said it did not detect any other OS, which meant I only had 4 options:   Erase disk and install Ubuntu (I don't want to do this) Encrypt new Ubuntu. Use LVM. Something else.   If I choose the Something else option, it brings me to the partition menu and says that I have 1 disk with free space of 750516Mb (750Gb), but that's not true because I have Windows 7.  I've already read through several questions and people have mentioned that you could only have 4 primary partitions. So I got hold of partition magic and removed my D: and E:, leaving me with primary C: partition and System reserved partition and a lot of unallocated space.  I restarted the laptop several times and booted the CD again and I got exactly the same as I did previously.  How do fix this problem and install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7?  EDIT 1  Here are my results for   sudo fdisk -l; echo; sudo parted -l; echo; mount; echo; df -h   WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.   Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x90050371     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2          206848   146368214    73080683+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT  Warning: /dev/sda contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a GPT table. However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it should. Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't understand GPT partition tables.  Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are now using an msdos partition table.  Is this a GPT partition table? Yes/No?     After selecting YES  Yes/No? yes                                                                Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used. OK/Cancel?
59602
I'm looking to install 32-bit windows with IIS to dual-boot with my 64-bit edition of windows on a laptop. I have a ten gig partition on my harddrive - is this large enough for a simple Windows install and a few programs?   I've never dual booted before, so I'm not quite sure how easy it is to mess up the process. Can you recommend any tutorials on how to set up a dual-boot configuration on Windows?
11713
I am installing windows 8.1 for the ASUS laptop.  I have two drive in the laptop namely:  Drive 1 : 40  GB Drive 2 : 450 GB   At the time of installation I have formated Drive 1 which I was suppose to use for Operating System installation. After I format I am getting an error:  Error:     Note: After googling I came to know that I need to format whole disk and need to convert the type of disk to GPT. But I have an important data in the drive Drive 2. How to resolve this?
66084
I am trying to install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on a Dell XPS 13 (9350). The laptop came with Windows 10 pre-installed. I am installing from a pendrive but I think the issue would be the same if I used e.g. a USB DVD drive.   Dude, where's my hard drive?  I am blocked because the installation program cannot find 8.6Gb of free space on my hard drive despite the fact that there are hundreds of Gb free according to Windows. Digging a bit into the problem, it seems that Ubuntu cannot see my hard disk at all.    This is the output of GParted:    I am not sure what that drive mounted at /cdrom is, but it seems the only device that exists in the system that is not a RAM disk or a loop device:   Content of /proc/partitions:   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /proc/partitions   major minor  #blocks  name     1        0      65536 ram0     1        1      65536 ram1     1        2      65536 ram2     1        3      65536 ram3     1        4      65536 ram4     1        5      65536 ram5     1        6      65536 ram6     1        7      65536 ram7     1        8      65536 ram8     1        9      65536 ram9     1       10      65536 ram10     1       11      65536 ram11     1       12      65536 ram12     1       13      65536 ram13     1       14      65536 ram14     1       15      65536 ram15     7        0     130048 loop0     7        1    1104188 loop1     8        0    1970239 sda     8        1    1953439 sda1   Summary of fdisk -l:   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l |grep Disk Disk /dev/ram0: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram1: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram2: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram3: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram4: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram5: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram6: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram7: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram8: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram9: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram10: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram11: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram12: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram13: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram14: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/ram15: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors Disk /dev/loop0: 127 MiB, 133169152 bytes, 260096 sectors Disk /dev/loop1: 1.1 GiB, 1130688512 bytes, 2208376 sectors Disk /dev/sda: 1.9 GiB, 2017525248 bytes, 3940479 sectors Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x00000000   Result of fdisk of the only non-loop non-RAM device (not sure this is relevant):   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l |grep -A 50 sda Disk /dev/sda: 1.9 GiB, 2017525248 bytes, 3940479 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x00000000  Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type /dev/sda1  *      129 3907007 3906879  1.9G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)   I am blocked at this point. Any help will be much appreciated.   Additional information (following comments):   Running dmesg |grep -i sata shows (among others) eight lines that suggest some kind of error:   ata1: SATA link down (SStatus FFFFFFFF SControl FFFFFFFF) ata2: SATA link down (SStatus FFFFFFFF SControl FFFFFFFF) ata3: SATA link down (SStatus FFFFFFFF SControl FFFFFFFF) ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) ata6: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) ata7: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) ata8: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)  I have "Restarted" windows instead of only "Shutdown" it to avoid problems with "fast startup", following some recommendations I have read of other users having problems installing Linux on Windows 10 laptops.ago   Regarding SATA, the BIOS says: "SATA Operation: RAID ON". The other two options available are "Disabled" and "AHCI".    I have followed the instructions of these two pages from Dell: , .