BIOS not recognizing hard drive - "Remove disks or other media" error [ Edited ]

[youradhere4222]

When I start up my computer, I receive a "Remove disks or other media. Press any key to restart error; no disks or USBs are plugged into it.

I troubleshooted it on the Lenovo support website, and went into the BIOS to see if it was recognizing the hard drive. My boot order is as follows:

1: USB FDD:

2: ATAPI CDO:HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD DRIVE - (PM)

3: USB CD:

4: ATA HDDO: ST9160823AS-(S1)

5: PCI LAN: IBA GE Slot 00C8 v1245

6: -USB HDD

7: ATA HDD1:

8: 

Ecluded from boot order:

: ATA HDD2

: ATAPI CD1

Number 4 looks to be the hard drive; however, there isn't a plus icon next to it, which makes me think otherwise. I cannot expand it, and trying to move it to a higher position isn't yielding any better of an outcome. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem?

FYI: The only changes I made prior to this was making my secondary hard drive partition ( Z: ) active, in addition to the primary one ( C: ). One thing I also took note of is that the boot manager was attributed to the secondary partition ( Z: ).

Thank you for any help.

[Duck3]

Try move "ATA HDD2" out of "excluded" to a higher position.

[youradhere4222]

Thank you for the reply.

my boot order is now as follows:

1: ata hdd2:
2: USB fdd:
3: atapi CDO:hl-dt-stcd-rw/DVD drive-(pm)
4: USB cd:
5: ata hddo: st9160823as-(s1)
6: pci LAN: iba ge slot 00c8 v1245
7: -USB hdd
8: ata hdd1:
excluded from boot order:
: atapi cd1:

unfortunately I'm still receiving the remove media or other devices error. are there any other things I can try?

[Duck3]

You better explain what your setup is like.

Number of drives, partitions, Operating System(s),
what model computer, all that stuff.

Especially what you mean by: "FYI: The only changes I made prior to this was making my secondary hard drive partition ( Z: ) active, in addition to the primary one ( C: ). One thing I also took note of is that the boot manager was attributed to the secondary partition ( Z: )."

Obviously your boot loader is not being found.

[youradhere4222]

I'm using a T61 Thinkpad, Model no: 6459 CTO. It has two partitions; C: contains Windows Vista, and Z: contains Windows 7. C: is about 100GB, Z: is about 30. 

What I meant by that excerpt is that I was messing around with the partitioning prior to the error. I was trying to format/delete C:, [b]but I did not.[/b] I kept receiving errors while trying to format and delete it.

At the time I last checked, the partition listing looked like this: 

Z: Healthy (boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary partition)

C: Healthy (system, primary partition)

[Duck3]

Do you have, or can you get hold of a Win 7 DVD?

If so, try these steps:

• Insert your Windows 7 DVD into your optical drive(DVD drive) and restart the system.
• Boot using this DVD by pressing any key when windows asks "Press any key to continue..".
• Select your language in the first screen and click "Next".
• In this Window, select the option named "Repair your computer".
• This tool will search for the installation directory for a minute.Once it finished, click "Next" once again.
• Under Recovery Tool, choose the option named "Startup repair". Now,Windows will try to repair your startup problem and gives a message to restart your system.

Restart your system to finish the process.

Thanks to "jesse" who posted this on techarena forums.