My notebook fell off table, did not break externaly but now fails to detect hard drive . what can i do to fix

go to hp website and download the latest firmware for your notebook

your HDD may be corrupted, re-installing windows vista is one option. Your best bet is if you have/ can obtain a copy of windows vista run setup and try the repair wizard in the windows vista setup, the wizard automatically finds errors and missing files and replaces them therefore solving any errors in your HDD. you can also try to use the recovery wizard from your recovery disc. best of luck

try to warm it with the hot air, and clean it with the contact cleaner

you have a damage hard disk.

It means that your notebook is not able to detect any hard drives or a bootable drive
also plz check if there are any cd/dvd or any external devices like flash drives or external hard drives connected to the nb.. If so disconnect all the external devices and try to boot up ..
If it does'nt work go to the bios screen by continiously tapping F10 or F2 or DEL key as soon as you turn on the nb and check if the hard drive is detected or not.. if its not reset the hard drive and retry.. If the hard drive is detected run a hard drive self test if it fails.. replace the drive if it passes run system recovery
Hope it works
All the best !!!

The drive has failed, Contact the manufacturer for a replacement and if u need the data back, contact a data recovery company :)

From what you describe, you may have a HDD failure. The Inspiron 8000 has a serial bus for the IDE drives and if one drive fails neither will work (If HDD Fails, the CD drive will not read)
Reseat both the HDD and Optical drive and make sure they are detected in BIOS. If HDD is not detected, replace it.

When your computer failed to boot from the disk-drive, it tried to connect to a network-accessible "boot-server" via the Ethernet adapter.

However, if there's no cable connected to the computer's Ethernet port, you will get the "check the cable" error-message.

So, your real problem is "invalid partition table", which means that the very first record on the disk-drive is either missing or corrupt.
That first record contains the "partition table", which lists the size of the hard-drive, and the size of each partition (usually only one) on the hard-drive.

So, you'll need to buy an adapter that has a USB-plug on one end, and a connector for your "SATA" or "IDE" hard-drive at the other end.

Remove the hard-drive from your computer, attach it to the connector, and plug-in the USB connector to a USB port on another computer, and then use software to delete and then reconstruct the partition table.

Or, the hard-drive is failing, and must be replaced (maybe under warranty???).

i am afraid that the drive has gone, but you could try to fix it using disk manager application.

Does BIOS detect the hard drive? if not then it has conked off. Buy a new one.