HDD data swiped after removing ram!?!?!?!

Benzino

Hey,

I wanted to check the make and type of my ram, so i turned off my pc and psu and removed 1gb of ram to get it's details and then i placed it back into the motherboard. The ram is covered by a heatsink, so i didn't actually touch the ram, only it's heatsink.

Anyway i started the pc and i got a message saying incorrect time, something like that. So i went into the bios to find the time had resetted back to 2001. So i changed it to correct time and changed by boot order back to what it should have been (it had also changed). The pc booted up again until it came to a black screen after your given the options to enter bios. The only thing been displayed on this screen is '_', flashing.

The black screen is the screen where i should be given the option to select my os. So to check my hdd's (which are 2 raptors running on rad 0), I changed the boot order to my cd drive and inserted my xp cd. I eventually got to the screen where you choose what hdd you want to install xp on, both my harddrives were free.

Sorry about this long post, but if you know what has happened here, please help me. I refuse to believe removing my ram for a few seconds will cause me to loss all my data on my harddrives.

jhegarty

Benzino wrote:

Hey,

I wanted to check the make and type of my ram, so i turned off my pc and psu and removed 1gb of ram to get it's details and then i placed it back into the motherboard. The ram is covered by a heatsink, so i didn't actually touch the ram, only it's heatsink.

Anyway i started the pc and i got a message saying incorrect time, something like that. So i went into the bios to find the time had resetted back to 2001. So i changed it to correct time and changed by boot order back to what it should have been (it had also changed). The pc booted up again until it came to a black screen after your given the options to enter bios. The only thing been displayed on this screen is '_', flashing.

The black screen is the screen where i should be given the option to select my os. So to check my hdd's (which are 2 raptors running on rad 0), I changed the boot order to my cd drive and inserted my xp cd. I eventually got to the screen where you choose what hdd you want to install xp on, both my harddrives were free.

Sorry about this long post, but if you know what has happened here, please help me. I refuse to believe removing my ram for a few seconds will cause me to loss all my data on my harddrives.

Sounds like the mbr or some such thing has been damanged... there are repair programs (can't remember the names off hand) that should repair the partition...

trout

before you do anything to the MBR or partitions ... pause a moment

sounds to me like the BIOS reset ... given that the date/time reset and the boot order changed

you may find the mobo has reset to defaults, for reasons as yet unknown

could you have disturbed the CMOS battery ?

you mention 'rad 0' ... i'm guessing you meant RAID 0 ?
what type of RAID controller have you ? (third party / on-board)

perhaps this RAID setup was reset along with the date/time/boot order ... and you may just need to correct this ? (heads / cylinders / drive geometry)

certainly, that's the path i would follow first ... before taking any chances with partition tables and MBR's

good luck!

Anti

Sounds like onboard raid to me, Just do as the poster above mentioned and all will be fine

Saruman

also.. and this might be the most simple approach.. depending on the board/bios.. in your boot order you should obviously have cdrom or floppy forst.. usually your 3rd boot device is your hard drive.. HOWEVER usually this is for IDE hard drive.. you are using a Raid controller so this should either be set specifically for that if it shows up.. or as other or 3rd party.. otherwise it will look for a standard IDE hard drive and not even try to boot off your raid card/onboard controller.

Benzino

thanks for all the helpful replies.

The raid settings were reset so i set them up correctly, and after a few blue screens of death , i got it working. When i put the 2nd stick of ram in, it didn't work, so i removed it and the bios resetted again :mad:. So i set it up again and working fine, altho i have yet to restart it.

Kinda strange as to why the bios resets when i remove my ram, cause i'm not touching the battery, nor is the battery near the ram.

Thanks again for your help

Cal

Benzino wrote:

Kinda strange as to why the bios resets when i remove my ram, cause i'm not touching the battery, nor is the battery near the ram.

I would guess there is a dry solder or a crack on the motherboard. You could be bending the board putting in the RAM and this could be resetting the bios due to a break in the power circuit to the bios.

Cal.

Anti

Or it could just be a feature in his bios ? try updating the bios to see if this happens again !

layke

Benzino wrote:

Kinda strange as to why the bios resets when i remove my ram, cause i'm not touching the battery, nor is the battery near the ram.

Thanks again for your help

The battery on your mainboard needs replacing. Hence the resets.