Dead harddrive or something else?

jester77

Took the laptop home for xmas and it started playing weird. On booting it would show the message "No operating system found". I would reboot and it would be ok. Then I had some problems transferring files from CD. Windows would crash and I would get the BSOD. After the second BSOD the laptop won't boot and I keep getting the "No operating system found" message. When I look in the bios it is unable to to find the hard disk. I then set the CD drive as the primary boot drive so I could run a utility disk to see if I could diagnose the problem however the drive spins and I then get the same message "No operating system found". No matter what CD (Windows, Linux, etc) I put in it is unable to boot from them which makes me thing that this might be a motherboard problem.

Anyone any ideas or experience with this?

majiktripp

How reliable is the CD drive? Sounds likes its checking the drive but cant access the disks, passing over the CD drive and trying to boot from the HDD (which is faulty by the sounds of it)
I would remove the hard drive and check it on another machine to see if it is fully dead.
If you could find an alternative laptop hard drive with windows or some operating system on it to put in the originals place *just* to see if its detect and tries to boot from it (even though it wont due to different drivers etc).
Could be a cd / hdd problem or indeed as you say a motherboard connector level issue.

jester77

majiktripp wrote: »

How reliable is the CD drive? Sounds likes its checking the drive but cant access the disks, passing over the CD drive and trying to boot from the HDD (which is faulty by the sounds of it)
I would remove the hard drive and check it on another machine to see if it is fully dead.
If you could find an alternative laptop hard drive with windows or some operating system on it to put in the originals place *just* to see if its detect and tries to boot from it (even though it wont due to different drivers etc).
Could be a cd / hdd problem or indeed as you say a motherboard connector level issue.

I don't use the CD drive much but I never had a problem with it when I did. The first time I encountered a problem was when I got the BSOD from trying to copy a file from a CD. I'll try the HD in another machine if I can find one! I assume that you should be able to boot from the CD drive even with a dead HD? Would be a big coincidence for the 2 to die at the same time.

mastermind2005

just replace the hard disk and install windows again. happy days

majiktripp

mastermind2005 wrote: »

just replace the hard disk and install windows again. happy days

He can't really do that if the CD drive aint booting from CD's now can he? (Well not easily anyways, could go the USB install route)

mastermind2005

possbily not a bootable windows disk?

wonder what "utility" hes trying to run

jester77

mastermind2005 wrote: »

possbily not a bootable windows disk?

wonder what "utility" hes trying to run

It was the "Ultimate Boot CD". Have tried other boot disks and none boot. Still trying to locate another laptop to test my drive!

GreenHell

Is it a dell?

jester77

GreenHell wrote: »

Is it a dell?

It's a Samsung X50, nearly 3 years old now.

SemperFidelis

Have you set the bios to boot from CD drive, i.e. make the CD drive the first boot device, try removing the HDD from this list and jsut have the CD drive on it.
You usually then get a message to press any key to boot from cd drive, but you have to be fast.



If you are running windows XP, boot from the CD and go into recovery console and do a fix boot. This will repair the hard disks boot sector.

jester77

Well, I sort of have it running now. I took the whole laptop apart last night so that I could have a look at the motherboard, was fun :eek: Didn't see any loose connections so put it all back together and it somehow booted from the CD. I then changed the bios to boot from HD and it worked, however I am getting a lot of CRC errors when trying to backup some of my files. I presume I need a new harddrive? I didn't do anything so don't know why it just started working again.

I've also managed to ring 1 of the screws that holds the plastic cover over the harddrive so I can't even get at it What can I do here?

majiktripp

Ringed screw head... - Dremel drill to bore it out and a steady hand. Had that situation myself on my own laptop not too long ago.Sounds like you need a replacement Hard drive alright with those CRC errors.

jester77

majiktripp wrote: »

Ringed screw head... - Dremel drill to bore it out and a steady hand. Had that situation myself on my own laptop not too long ago.Sounds like you need a replacement Hard drive alright with those CRC errors.

Darn, where would one get access to such a drill or what type of store would do it for me? Don't know anyone with one and I've only got a big manly drill I've also managed to do the same with the memory cover, bloody screws are rubbish

majiktripp

Possibly your local computer repair store or buy a cheap knock off dremel drill in somewhere like Maplin to do the job.