did my hard drive crash? and some other questions. (1 Viewer)

[TonyD]

ok to start i have a compaq presario with a 40 gig hard drive. or at least i did.

the other day it shut itself off then rebooted.
when it came back on it was displaying what looked like maybe dos, i dont know because i am truly a novice on this type of thing.
anyway the windows xp screen never came back on.

so i rebooted again and nothing.
so i put the compaq restore cd in to see what it would do and after running for a minute or so a big red screen came on that said call compaq for service, or something close to that wording.

so i did but since it is out of waranty they wanted me to pay $30 just to try and help with what was wrong.
she wouldnt even answer any simple questions i may have had.
like can i replace the hd with a new store bought one and how do i get back all the installed programs onto the new hd.

so does this sound like a hd crash?

what is the risk of my buying another hd and installing it? if that isn't the problem are hard drives returnable if i can't use it?

what happens to all the programs that origionally came with the computer? are they on the restore cd?
i had norton and was always updated so i shouldnt have had any virus but what if i do. how do i know?
becausee it will likely destroy anything else going on this pc.

any advice would be hugely helpful.

td

 

[TonyD]

ok the last thing i could get to before the red screen popped up, was something that had an option to go to the last known working configuration.


but when i clicked it, nothing happened.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Suck city! I feel for you. Never had a Compaq, but here are a few ideas to try out in the meantime.

You might have a boot disk with an option to just go to dos. If that works, you should see (between the quote marks) "C>:" Type in "dir" and press enter. You should see a list of files with how big they are and when they were made. If anything on the screen is not in English, then your drive probably crashed.

Your rescue CD might have an option to format your drive, but if you do that, everything will be erased.

Another thought - and this may or may not work. At the C prompt, type in "FDISK /mbr" and press return. This resets the master boot record and might fix things.

I hope someone else here knows more about your model. As for hard drives, try to get a return for it if it does not work, and if it does not work, there may be something wrong with your motherboard.

Glenn

 

[Evan.G]

You might use that fdisk /mbr command as a last option.

Compaq is infamous for having these system restore discs shipped w/ the system. They require original spec hardware to run. You would have an hd that matched the original. If you get a generic version of windows, you could use any hd from a store. Many store allow you to return something w/in a short period w/ no fee.

 

[KyleS]

Compaq is infamous for having these system restore discs shipped w/ the system. They require original spec hardware to run.

This is true for the most part but a different hard drive size or brand shouldnt make a difference in whether or not the restore disc will work (Changing the motherboard could).

Before going to buy another hard drive you could at least reformat the hard drive and see if it will reload the OS. Of course you would lose all of your information but you would be doing the same thing by buying a new HD.

KyleS

 

[Evan.G]

"Before going to buy another hard drive you could at least reformat the hard drive"

That's a good point. I once had a hard drive that a virus had ruined. Messing around with the bood record or fat didn't help. It was unreadable, but I could reformat it and start from scratch.

 

[Cees Alons]

Formatting the drive would be the very last option before buying a new one (or a new PC). When my drive would crash, I would abandon it as fast as I could after I recovered everything I could still get off it. So rescuing the information would be priority number one (and almost the only objective).

If everything else fails, another possibility might be to buy a new disk (if you're sure everything else seems to work in your PC), install it as the first disk (and keep your current one as a second HD) and put the OS on the new one. Then you could try to recover your current disk.

Of course, if no valuable information is on your disks (except the OS), all that trouble wouldn't be necessary.

And, please, make sure it is the HD. Glen's suggestion about the MBR is very valuable, BTW! Try to get a system on a CD (you may have to set the CD as a boot device in the PC-setup first) or a floppy (probably DOS in this case). That way you can try to inspect the HD and at the same time see if the PC as a whole is functioning.


Cees

 

[TonyD]

i would love to try any of these ideas but as of now all can get to show up are "non system disk or disk error replace and strike any key when ready"

and when i hit f-12 at restart i get "58 301-keyboard error"telling me to plug in or replace my keyboard.
on the bottom it says network service boot.

when i hit the f-1 option from this screen i get an error message....
"pxe-e61 media test failure check caBLE"

i can no longer get the c> or a> to come up.

 

[TonyD]

ok i was some able to get to c:> but typing in fdisk or fdisk/mbr did nothing.

 

[TonyD]

so i was able to get to something called the ide dps self test.
here's what it says.

test failed. drive replacement recommended.
completion code 7.
then it lists my drive info.


so i guess tht means the hard drive is done.

next question.
what type of hd should i look for.

i suppose i could just check at the service desk of a store.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

That sucks! Try to get the same brand (if it is a known good type). You also might want to get on the drive maker's site and see if they have any warranty info that extends beyond what you had for the whole machine.

Don't throw it out just yet if you do get a new one. You didn't say what version of Win you were using, but in ME fdisk.exe is at win9xbase2.cab. You'd have to extract it, and you have the option of wiping out the entire disk and starting over with it.

Fdisk is below the format command, so if your current bad disk has some screwed up files that is preventing it from working, or even just a scrambled format, then doing a fdisk wipe will fix it, and you'd have 2 drives.

Best of luck
Glenn

 

[TonyD]

thanks glenn.
buried near the beginning of my first post

anyway the windows xp screen never came back on.

.


the hd is a seagate.
i'll try to sea if their site has any info.

 

[Evan.G]

I'd say don't worry about getting an identicle drive. They should be fairly compatible. You could check the max bus speed for your laptop and at least get a drive of that speed. Old laptop drives are slow. You should be able to get an upgrade out of this, right?

 

[Eric Samonte]

My brother's pc is on the blink as well, Win XP pro splash screen comes on then blank. We tried the safe mode thingy to make use of the "Restore settings" but we can't even get to safe mode on it.
Same thing actaully happend to this box of mine with system restore not finishing. I know I did something to complete it but I can't seem to remember what it is.

 

[TonyD]

so, what i ended up doing was going to bestbuy and buying a maxtor 100gb 7200 rpm with bonus 20 gb.

it was for sale at bestbuy for 140.00 and comes with 2 seperate $30 rebates.

it's an ultra ata/133. the old hd was anultra dma.

i can use this new one in my pc? right?

 

[Evan.G]

You should be able to. Plug it in and see .
The ata133 drives should be backward compatible w/ whatever speed your bus is capable of. The dma mode of access is not an alternative to ata. You can look it up if you are interested, but I'd say, just plug it in. If it came w/ a diskette to install, use it. You may learn something from it, although it is not likely to be needed.

 

[TonyD]

ok i have the new hd a maxtor, but it seems i need a winxp boot floppy.
i dont have one.

i tried to get one on the microsoft site but the only thing i can find is a 6 disck floppy set. not a 1 disk boot.

now what to do?


ok another discovery.

i have to buy a compaq quick restore cd to mirror my contents onto the new hd.

the recovery cd is the only thing that came with the pc and does not have the program contents.
cost $10.60.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I think you have a problem. If your old HD crashed, how are you going to get a 'mirror' done?

As for booting, you should be able to change your bootup config to have it boot from your CD ROM first, but I have a feeling that it will be looking for the XP files, and not find them because they are buried in a Windows directory, on your old HD.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get the OS, or was the copy on Tony's old drive it? Did he get a serial number that, in theory, MS could replace?

Glenn

 

[Rob Gillespie]

i have to buy a compaq quick restore cd to mirror my contents onto the new hd.

What is it from the old hard drive you want to recover? If it's the OS or applications, forget it because you wont be able to reinstall anything without the original installation files. If it's your own data then it would be easier to just to install the old drive as a slave to the new one and see if you can copy the files over.

 

[TonyD]

glenn i tried both ways. i used bootdisk.com but the xpboot file doesnt work for me for some reason. i'll try to downl;oad it again to see if i can get it to work.


i wasnt trying to recover any of my files from the old hd but trying to install a new seperate hd and if i want all of the preinstalled programs that came with my computer that is why i have to buy the $10 quick restore cd from compaq.

the mirror is of the pre install stuff not my actual stuff.

i really do apreciate all tyhe suggestions so far thanks.