Laptop won't see hard disk

[Joe_90]

Hi,
I'm having trouble getting my laptop to see my hard disk. I've had to put another hard disk in because I dropped my laptop ( well sort of, my ruck sack slipped off my shoulder, it wasn't a heavy thud but enough apparently to damge the hard disk ). I've managed to format the new one and have partly loaded XP from my operating system disk but when I come to let the hard disk load by itself to continue with the rest of the XP installation it refuses and the BIOS says it can't see the disk. Is there some way I can make the hard disk connect to the laptop or is the motherboard f$&ked ?
Thanks

[icecube]

Hi Joe

If this is an older laptop, you might have a dead cmos battery. The cmos battery can fail after about 3 to 5 years. If that has happened, you need to go into the bios and manually redetect your hard drive each and every time you boot up or replace the battery. Usually the date and time start to be way off before the battery completely fails.

[Joe_90]

Thanks Icecube, that could be the problem, the time has been erratic for some months.
I don't suppose somebody could tell me the procedure for manual detection, I've done it on a normal PC but not on a laptop, can't seem to work out how to do it from the bios.
I haven't located a battery on any web site yet either, if anybody knows a good supplier that would be cool.
Cheers.

[Joe_90]

Sorry, probly help if I mention my type of laptop ! ! , it's a Dell Latitude 110L...

[icecube]

The Bios battery is about the size of a dime to a quarter. One of the removable panels on the laptop should give access to it. It's this battery that keeps track of date, time and hard drive settings. That's probably what you need to replace.

If that battery goes bad, you can get into the bios usually tapping on the f2 key or the delete key when you turn on the system. Then once in the bios you can click on the hard drive section and configure your hard drive.

Without a new bios battery, the system will go stupid the minute you shut the system down and you will have to go through the same routine to reset the date, time and hd