Laptop only boots with dvd in drive

Weird issue with HP 4510s laptop. End user called to say he was getting a disk error message. Since he is 50 miles away, I walked him through going into the BIOs and run a HD test. Test says HD bad or cannot be found. Great, Im making a drive to his office.

As I was grabbing a new HD and laptop just in case, he calls back. Says when he puts in a dvd with movies in it, the computer works. Im like WTF? I pop up logmein, and sure enough there he is. You take the dvd out and reboot, and says HD can't be found.

BIOs passes the HD test only if a disc is in the drive, otherwise it says bad HD.

Anyone run across this one before?

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Comments

tiersten

Never heard of this problem before.

I'd assume that something is badly broken with the SATA/PATA bus or the HDD/DVD inside the laptop.

Devilsbane

I've also never heard of this.

Out of curiosity, does it work with a CD?

Bokeh

Ill have him give it a try with a CD as well. Will let you know.

RobertKaucher

I can't say it was the exact same issue, but I did have this on a very old Pentium III system that would not boot w/o a CD in the drive. It was far too old fo rme to worry about, though. Have you tried resetting the BIOS to defaults?

Devilsbane

Did you ever investigate this?

Also, nice pic RK.

Bokeh

I have calls back into the end user. We did reset back to factory defaults, had same issue. Havent heard back yet if he tried with a normal cd.