I just had a client who reformatted his drive and reinstalled Windows XP Pro on it. After he did that, when he reattached the 2 other SATA internal hard drives that he has for his data, one showed up fine, and the other showed up as a “Foreign Domestic Drive” and had a yellow question mark next to it in Disk Management (see image of similar situation below).

 
When I RIGHT-clicked on it in Disk Management, it gave the options to either “convert to basic disk” (which you do NOT want to do unless you want to lose all of your data), or to “Import Foreign Disk.” The answer was to Import Foreign Disk. It only took about 10 seconds.

So here’s how to get to Disk Management in Windows XP to do this:

1. Log on as administrator or as a member of the Administrators group (which basically means just log into your computer since a user is set up as an “Administrator” by default)
2. Click Start button in bottom left
3. Click Run (Windows 7 or Vista see below)
4. Type compmgmt.msc (Windows 7 or Vista see below)
5. Click OK (Windows 7 or Vista see below)
6. In the console tree, click Disk Management (Windows 7 or Vista see below)

NOTE 1: If you’re using Windows 7 or Vista, skip steps 3 – 6 above, and after you click the colored start ball in the bottom left of your screen, simply type Disk Management in the search field and hit your key to get to Disk Management.

7. Once in Disk Management, RIGHT-click on the section for the hard drive in question where the yellow exclamation mark is on the the icon for the hard drive (same section where it as “Dynamic Foreign”; see image above)
8. Select “Import Foreign Disk”
9. It will take about 10 seconds to do its thing
10. It will then ask, “Before using these disks, add them to your system configuration. Disk groups: ” Below that text will be a box with a check box already checked next to “Foreign disk group (1 of 1 disk).” Yes, you want to do that. Just click OK.
11. After this, you should be good to go and have all of your data back, so check it.

NOTE 2: During my research, one guy said after he clicked “Import Foreign Disk,” it hanged for about 10 hours, however everyone else said that it worked. And it worked for my client. So maybe that one guy was experiencing a user error or had a more serious problem. But I still feel compelled to say to do this at your own risk.

After you do this, the only thing that will be different is that the bar in Disk Management for that disk that was just imported will be green instead of blue. But other than that, things will be back to normal.

NOTE 3: If you your disk is being classified as “invalid” instead of “foreign,” then you might have it connected via USB, which Windows Vista & 7 do not like. If that’s the case, then find a way to connect it directly via SATA or IDE (depending on what kind of drive it is), and then it should show up as a foreign drive and you can follow the above instructions to import it.

Enjoy!

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I was getting the same message with one of my systems. It was not even listing the hard drive or the CD-ROM in the BIOS. It ended up being a very easy fix.

Here was the fix:

I simply replaced the CMOS battery. This system was a desktop, by the way. The CMOS batter is a small round battery found on the motherboard, and has the battery code of CR2032, in case you need to go buy it. Radio Shack has them. But I would make sure the one that is in there is low on power before you go out and buy a new one. You’ll need a battery tester to do this.

Once you have confirmed that it is the battery, and you have a new one in your hand, just pop out the old one on the motherboard, and put in the new one. BEFORE you take it out, make sure you note how it goes in, and make sure you replace it quickly. You still may have to reset the date and time, as well as some of the settings in the BIOS. If you don’t know what they are, then just load the default BIOS settings in the BIOS.

Replacing the CMOS battery is for intermediate to advanced users. However, if you are a beginner and you are ambitious, just Google it if you need visuals.

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Are you trying to boot up into Safe Mode, and you’re getting an “Input not supported” error?

Here’s the fix:

It means that the refresh rate that the video card is sending is too high for the monitor that is plugged into your computer. If this happens to you, most likely you are using an LCD monitor (typical LCD monitors can not handle that high of a refresh rate). To get around this, simply switch to a CRT monitor (the old bulky monitors that look like an old TV) and finish what you need to do, or switch to another LCD monitor that can handle it.

It’s weird that a friend of mine experienced this, as Safe Mode has the lowest settings of the native Windows display drivers running. But it happened, and that was the fix.

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