Does a Laptop need its battery?

[Nominus Experse]

So I bought a laptop from a Pawn Shop, and it happens to be missing its battery. However, it has the power cord, so I can still turn it on and such. I'm trying to install a clean install of Windows XP on the laptop, but I keep getting a message basically saying that I don't have any hard drives, or if I do, they aren't connected.

The thing is, I have a hard drive, and it is connected (I broke into the computer and checked).

So why the message?

[Namelessfengir]

take it back and complain laptops are supposed to have a battery and you totally call them on the hard drive issue make them fix it and install it them selves

[Nominus Experse]

It was cheap for those very reasons. I ask here because I am sure there is a method of solving this.

[Flying Mullet]

Do laptops need a battery to run? No, they don't. One of my old work laptops had a bum battery that couldn't hold a charge, so it basically was a desktop. Now as far as the hardware being in place, that I'm not sure about. I know I've started up my laptop without the battery installed when I was trying to determine if the battery was shot, but I don't know if there has to be a battery connected, good or bad, for you to install the OS.

Have you tried checking on eBay for a used battery?

[Namelessfengir]

okay .... the battery can fly you can buy on off of ebay or the manufacturer

but the harddrive .... was there a problem with it when you bought it? i mean did it have an os was it working? you can pull the hard drive and then drop it back in, it might have been loose. if that dont work take it back because they sold you a glorified paper weight

dont know how much this helps but its all i got to say

[Tasura]

take it back and complain laptops are supposed to have a battery and you totally call them on the hard drive issue make them fix it and install it them selves

He bought it at a Pawn shop, they don't give a rat's ass whether something works or not.

And as for the harddrive issue, I've no other idea then what's already been said.

[Mirage]

Most laptops work fine without their batteries. Some don't, it depends on how they're wired back there. However, this should not affect anything else in any way. If you manage to turn it on without the battery, it shouldn't affect the hard drive at all.

If you want to check the hard disk, flip it upside down and look for a slot fastened with a few screws. There should be about 2-3 of them, one for the hard disk, one for the RAM chips, and maybe one more for some other skulls. I can't tell you which one is gonna be the right one, so you just gotta go for trial and error to find out. When you find the drive, you should be able to tell if the cords are plugged in correctly. If a hard drive isn't present at all, fear not, because they're real cheap these days. You should be able to find a retail 40 GB 2.5" hard disk for like 30 bucks, or 120 for $50.

-edit-
I didn't see the part about you opening it and checking it at first. If that's the case, it might be the hard drive itself that's broken. If you know anyone with a laptop, you can ask them if they'll let you test your hard disk in their laptop, just to see if it works for them. If it doesn't, it's likely that the hard disk is faulty and you'll need a new one. If it does work, it's likely to be a more serious problem, and I can't really help you. Testing your hard disk in a different laptop will not ruin any of the data stored on the laptop that was originally in the other laptop.

[o_O]

I think it's likely to be the hard drive, the IDE (maybe SATA but not likely ) cable connecting it to the motherboard or the IDE/SATA controller on the motherboard. The drive and the cable can be replaced but if it's the controller on the motherboard, you'd have to replace the entire motherboard, and it's probably not worth it.

You also might want to check that the hard drive isn't incorrectly slaved to the CD drive (if it is IDE) or something like that.

[Mirage]

I don't see how that could have been done by accident though...

[o_O]

Who says it needed to be done accidentally?

A laptop bought from a pawn shop could have been subjected to anything. My best guess is that the parts are just worn out.

[Nominus Experse]

Well, I've been browsing hp.com and I came across this page: Intel SATA AHCI Controller Driver 

This looks to be what I need, but I don't have a floppy drive, and so I can't use this. Would there be any possible way in having this search for a USB Flash Drive instead?

[o_O]

It's possible that it will work. Try downloading the executable and running it to see if it is capable of putting stuff on a floppy. It may even just create a directory tree for copying. In that case it should work.

EDIT: Ok, I tried it and it won't write to my microSD (or any of my flash cards), so you're out of luck with your flash drive, I'm afraid.

EDIT2: Ok, so if you run the installer, it does two things: decompresses a batch file to a directory of your specification, and then runs the batch file. Of course, if you don't have a floppy in the drive the batch file fails and the installer deletes it, so that ostensibly there were no files extracted.

What you can actually do though, is use WinRAR or another archiving tool to extract the batch (F6flpy32.exe) from the installer (sp32478.exe), and then use it again to extract a disk image (temp.IMA) from the batch file. I will investigate whether or not you can image a usb drive with temp.IMA, brb.

[Nominus Experse]

Face, I smurfing love you, whether this works or not.

[crono_logical]

Ah, a SATA driver, they make for fun for installing XP

If you have a proper XP installation CD (or burnable image of, or the installation files on HD somewhere), and the right SATA driver, you can download nLite to rebuild the CD to reburn with the SATA driver built in, so you don't need a floppy drive in the laptop to provide the drivers on.

Use nLite to build a new XP CD image with the drivers included - should be straightforward since the software's essentially wizard-based, burn the new CD, then use that CD to install XP to the laptop without any driver hassle Personally I'd keep that CD somewhere safe then in case you need to repeat with the same laptop


If you have any problems getting the drivers out of that .exe, I can upload them for you since I've managed to extract them via virtual-machine/virtual-floppy-drive


EDIT: Face obviously found a quicker way to extract them faster

[o_O]

There is a way to do it, fortunately. I found this method, while looking for a way to extract the drivers from the IMA image file.

You'll need <a href="http://www.magiciso.com/download.htm">MagicISO</a>, <a href="http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/nLite.shtml">this (freeware) application</a> and your Windows CD. nLite is a slipstreamer, that is, a utility to remove unwanted and add desired components to a Windows CD ISO image.

Here's what to do:

• First, download and install <a href="http://www.magiciso.com/download.htm">MagicISO</a>. I'm not sure what limitations the free version has, but I'm sure you're smart enough to make it work for you. You need to use MagicISO to extract the files from temp.IMA, and put them somewhere you know the location of.
  
• Then you need to rip your Windows disc to ISO (if that's not how it started out ). I think MagicISO can probably do it, but there are a million tools out there to rip discs; you probably have one.
  
• Then you need to open up nLite and slipstream the drivers extracted from temp.IMA into the Windows ISO image. <a href="http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml">Here</a> is a general guide to using nLite.
  
• Then burn your ISO to disc, and run it as a normal Windows installation, and it should work if those drivers are indeed the solution to your problem.

One other thing: When you busted open the laptop, did you notice whether it had a SATA or IDE drive? SATA drives use thin, red cables, IDEs use fat grey ribbon cables. I ask because the drivers from HP above are definitely SATA drivers.

EDIT: Beaten. xD
I had extracted the executable files, but not the files from the image.
Also Nom - It would be much faster just to nick the drivers off of clout than to download MagicISO.