John wrote:
> This is a Sony PCG 9A4N. It's a Japanese key board model (My wife is
> Japanese).
> I took the cmos battery out but not for more than a few minutes and it
> didn't loose its date... It could have been 5 minutes or so???
> I have to wait until she comes home before I attack it further.
> When it attempts to find the operating system I hear "tap, tap tap tap tap"

Taking out the CMOS battery will not help. Either your hard drive has
died and/or your motherboard IDE controller has died. The fact that
Knoppix and the BIOS don't see it confirms that. The tapping sounds
usually mean the hard drive is the faulty component. To further check if
it is just the hard drive, you can remove it and put it in a usb drive
enclosure or use a notebook-to-desktop IDE converter. Attach the drive
to another computer and see if it is recognized. If not (and I suspect
it will not be seen), replace the hard drive. If you want to be sure the
notebook motherboard IDE controller is good (it probably is) you can
attach another notebook hard drive if you have one. You don't need to
boot into an operating system - just check to see if the drive is found
in the BIOS.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User