0

At the company we have a Laptop HP Elitebook 8770w which has some problems with booting. We had an SSD to boot from and a 2nd HDD. The Windows 7 OS is installed on the SSD. Now we have removed the SSD from the laptop and tried to install Windows 7 on the HDD which failed. I've already found out that the problem is that the HDD is configurated in RAID instead of IDE/SATA. This can easily be solved by accessing the BIOS and change it from there.

Now the problem is: the BIOS is locked with a password which is unknown for us. We've tried several standard passwords but neither of those appeared to be working for us. This can be solved by calling the HP-Support and ask for a file to flash the BIOS. We would like to keep this option as the very last.

Is there any way we could switch the HDD from RAID to IDE/SATA so we can install Windows 7 on it?

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    This cannot be changed without access to the firmware configuration.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 14:40
  • This ^^^ And anyway you want to change from RAID to AHCI. But if you can't change the mode you'll have to provide the specific RAID drivers to the Windows installer.
    – user772515
    Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 18:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

You can't do this without Bios access, as Ramhound already said.
But there may be another option. If I remember correctly the SSS drive and the HDD in those laptops are both the same formfactor.
Simply move the HDD into the SSD slot. That will make it work in the same way as the SSD did.

Improve this answer
3
  • I'll give it a try and keep you updated
    – Thimi11
    Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 15:42
  • The HDD is usually mounted in tray that has 5 screws. 1 to lock the tray in the housing and 4 that lock the drive in the tray. In some models all 5 screws hold the tray in place so check carefully before you put some force on it while removing the tray.
    – Tonny
    Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 15:50
  • there are on both trays only 3 screws with a suspension. On the tray were the SSD used to be is a 'flat thing' attached above and separated from the SSD with 1 screw and some 'plastic tab'
    – Thimi11
    Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 15:54

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .