PC has died - Advice appreciated

padair

Looking for some advice regarding my PC. It died yesterday at 16:00 :-( which is a pain in the ass.

When I turn in on it gets past the screen where it show the memory and the different devices plugged in. After this the screen goes black and then a blue screen flashes up and I am brought back to the Bootup logo.

I have have tried to boot the PC in safe mode but the same occurs.

Does anyone have any advice on what the next course of action may be..? I was planning on getting a new laptop in June and I would like to grab some stuff off the hard drive. Any advice on how to do this would be great.

P.

Krusader

looks like it is failing to boot the OS

make sure your HDD is the 1st to boot in the boot sequence in the BIOS, it could be a HDD failure

yoyo

Sounds like a faulty driver or hardware problem, I would be fairly sure its hard disk failure like Crosáidí suggested, if you want to backup your files you can try running a linux live distro (such as Ubuntu, mounting the windows hard drive and copying the files onto an external device such as usb stick or hard drive.
With ubuntu you simply burn it to a CD, boot off the ubuntu cd on the problem computer (some computers ie Dells have a boot device menu that can be displayed by hitting F12 from memory), but many machines have a boot order section in the bios you will need to edit so that CD/DVD ROM is set to first priority.
When you boot off the ubuntu CD pick run as live CD (Dont install) and you should be able to mount the windows drive in that enviornment (it should find this drive automatically)

Hope this helps

Nick

TheDukeOfEarl

It is time OP. It is time to buy a Mac.

Said with sheer arrogance and bitter, unnecessary contempt for the mere peasants that use Windows*

I actually love Windows, but simply prefer Mac. I know this wasn't the kind of advice you were seeking, but I'm just trying to arrogantly plant that thought in your head. Thought in your head. Mac. In your head. Pro. Mac. Head. Arrogance.

yoyo

TheDukeOfEarl wrote: »

It is time OP. It is time to buy a Mac.

Said with sheer arrogance and bitter, unnecessary contempt for the mere peasants that use Windows*

I actually love Windows, but simply prefer Mac. I know this wasn't the kind of advice you were seeking, but I'm just trying to arrogantly plant that thought in your head. Thought in your head. Mac. In your head. Pro. Mac. Head. Arrogance.

And Macs are immune to hardware failures such as hard disks failing? :rolleyes: What a pointless post

nick

TheDukeOfEarl

yoyo wrote: »

And Macs are immune to hardware failures such as hard disks failing? :rolleyes: What a pointless post

nick

I already acknowledged that I was simply planting thoughts in the OPs head. I acknowledged that I was not giving appropriate advice. Why must you point this out ? Why the negativity/sarcasm ? One could argue that your post was also pointless. I was expressing myself. I'm sorry you thought my post was pointless.

yoyo

TheDukeOfEarl wrote: »

I already acknowledged that I was simply planting thoughts in the OPs head. I acknowledged that I was not giving appropriate advice. Why must you point this out ? Why the negativity/sarcasm ? One could argue that your post was also pointless. I was expressing myself. I'm sorry you thought my post was pointless.

Your post suggested Macs don't go faulty and that it was a problem only PCs face (From the "Its Time to Buy A Mac"). If the OP was asking for advice concerning a new laptop/computer well then possibly fair enough, but its not really any benefit to the OP at this point to suggest buying a Mac, especially as Apple have been known to use poor quality hard disks in the past (Google Apple seagate scandal)

Nick

padair

padair wrote: »

Looking for some advice regarding my PC. It died yesterday at 16:00 :-( which is a pain in the ass.

When I turn in on it gets past the screen where it show the memory and the different devices plugged in. After this the screen goes black and then a blue screen flashes up and I am brought back to the Bootup logo.

I have have tried to boot the PC in safe mode but the same occurs.

Does anyone have any advice on what the next course of action may be..? I was planning on getting a new laptop in June and I would like to grab some stuff off the hard drive. Any advice on how to do this would be great.

P.

Cheers for the posts, I managed to to capture the blue screen on my camera. The screen references unmountable hard drive. Would this mean total hd failure.

yoyo

padair wrote: »

Cheers for the posts, I managed to to capture the blue screen on my camera. The screen references unmountable hard drive. Would this mean total hd failure.

More than likely yes, or else controller failure or something along those lines, I'm guessing the hard drive is knackered, follow my instructions about using Ubuntu above which may help salvage your files, fingers crossed you can get them back

Nick

Morpork

Before doing anything drastic, there a little things that can cause these error and are easy to over look.

A USB/Floppy in the machine that's taking boot priority (I think you checked this though).

Loose cables. Re-seat the power and data cables on that are going into the HD and motherboard. Check the POST screen to see if it's in the list of attached devices. If not, try this.

Corrupted HD. Run a chkdsk /r by loading a PE (pre-installed environment) such as PartPE, ultimate boot disk, etc (You can download them off the web).

Missing files. Run a system restore if you can (depends on the problem) using the above programs.

Failed controller. Normally you wouldn't see the hard drive in the POST if the controller is dead. If you don't see it, then see if you can locate another controller (must be the same drive model). You might be able to get one free from a computer repair shop.

By the way, did you hear any clicking noise prior to this problem? In the days leading up to it.

padair

Morpork wrote: »

Before doing anything drastic, there a little things that can cause these error and are easy to over look.

A USB/Floppy in the machine that's taking boot priority (I think you checked this though).

Loose cables. Re-seat the power and data cables on that are going into the HD and motherboard. Check the POST screen to see if it's in the list of attached devices. If not, try this.

Corrupted HD. Run a chkdsk /r by loading a PE (pre-installed environment) such as PartPE, ultimate boot disk, etc (You can download them off the web).

Missing files. Run a system restore if you can (depends on the problem) using the above programs.

Failed controller. Normally you wouldn't see the hard drive in the POST if the controller is dead. If you don't see it, then see if you can locate another controller (must be the same drive model). You might be able to get one free from a computer repair shop.

By the way, did you hear any clicking noise prior to this problem? In the days leading up to it.

Which screen is the post screen?

burrentech

yoyo wrote: »

And Macs are immune to hardware failures such as hard disks failing? :rolleyes: What a pointless post

nick

Too right had power supply fail on a MAC, DVD drive also went. Poor design led to store having to replace case TWICE under warranty!

Buy the PC that best suits your requirements, don't be swayed by the sales person in PCWorld, or where ever you decide to shop.

Decide what you want, storage capacity, processor speed. Are you a gamer, then performance is important along with memory. Into photography, the the display and graphics card is more important. You get the drift. Check out what's available online, and the costs. Go to a local store and make a deal. Its always better to deal with the local guy

Good luck with retrieving your data, as yoyo says, looks like hardware issue, if you've no luck getting your data, I have some more sophisticated tools that works when the disk it too bad for the linux tools.

Good Luck

Fysh

TheDukeOfEarl wrote: »

It is time OP. It is time to buy a Mac.

Said with sheer arrogance and bitter, unnecessary contempt for the mere peasants that use Windows*

I actually love Windows, but simply prefer Mac. I know this wasn't the kind of advice you were seeking, but I'm just trying to arrogantly plant that thought in your head. Thought in your head. Mac. In your head. Pro. Mac. Head. Arrogance.

You have to bear in mind that you're simply stating your preference as though it's of any use in solving the OP's problem. Which, since you've not even talked about how one might connect & access a hard drive from a Windows machine to a Mac of any description, it's not. Which means that you've not noticed the Charter or the No Off-Topic Advocacy rule.

Thanks for playing though

OP: It may be worth trying to borrow a USB-SATA or USB-PATA adapter to test the drive in the event that it's a motherboard socket issue.

yoyo

padair wrote: »

Which screen is the post screen?

Its the screen that shows all your hardware devices are loading, if its a Dell or other branded pc you usually see their logo with an option to enter system setup/bios,

Nick

padair

Thanks for all of the posts. I am going to go with the ubuntu option and try and see if I can get to the hard drive from there.

Capt'n Midnight

TheDukeOfEarl behave :mad:

It's a windows forum (the clue is in the name)

And besides MAC's are just expensive PC's running a variant of Unix these days.

They use the same processors, RAM and Harddrives as PC's. I've yet to see anything that suggests they are more reliable than similar priced / speced PC hardware (especially if you can compare just hardware)

Ubuntu will run fine on them, hackintoshes and bootcamp shows that there isn't much to choose from.

Capt'n Midnight

padair wrote: »

Thanks for all of the posts. I am going to go with the ubuntu option and try and see if I can get to the hard drive from there.

If the drive is making clicking noises it's probably the drive

if it's stop 7B then it's likely to be HDD driver, check bios settings for sata mode (straw clutching)

don't forget to check for malware too - avg have a bootable recovery disk


you can use the ubuntu disk (or put the drive in another pc) and use testdisk (Ubuntu/ windows) to check if the partition has been changed

BanzaiBk

I'm having a similar problem with a Win7 laptop I've been given to look at. From disabling the auto-restart in the advanced options I saw the error was "unmountable boot drive". No clicking noises or anything from the HDD but I do know that the system "failed" when the owner tried to install a program (Office iirc). Would unmountable boot drive more or less mean HDD failure?

Have Win7 recovery disks and I can't get passed the "choose keyboard language" option when I try to recover it. (Have changed boot order in BIOS too)

Any thoughts welcome.

Fysh

BanzaiBk wrote: »

I'm having a similar problem with a Win7 laptop I've been given to look at. From disabling the auto-restart in the advanced options I saw the error was "unmountable boot drive". No clicking noises or anything from the HDD but I do know that the system "failed" when the owner tried to install a program (Office iirc). Would unmountable boot drive more or less mean HDD failure?

Have Win7 recovery disks and I can't get passed the "choose keyboard language" option when I try to recover it. (Have changed boot order in BIOS too)

Any thoughts welcome.

You could try booting GParted and seeing if the disk is recognized correctly - that should give you an idea if the disk is ok or not. If it's not recognized, try it on a different machine and via a different interface (eg USB-SATA) if possible and see where you get. If none of those work, it's probably a dead drive

BanzaiBk

Fysh wrote: »

You could try booting GParted and seeing if the disk is recognized correctly - that should give you an idea if the disk is ok or not. If it's not recognized, try it on a different machine and via a different interface (eg USB-SATA) if possible and see where you get. If none of those work, it's probably a dead drive

Dead drive! Thanks Fysh.

spannerotoole

I find that this issue is sometimes caused by ram becoming loose. This happens as the ram and the mobo connectors go through temperature changes and they become loose over time. You might try reseating the ram.

Also if it's a corrupted file get a Windows Disc (you don't need the key to do this bit) boot it and go to the recovery console. then press 1. If you have an admin password then enter this.

Then type chkdsk /r

This can take some time, but when it's finished, remove the disk, reboot and viola, you can now enter Windows XP again.

Then back up your info.