Machine wont boot I'm stumped...

[SteamWake]

So I was sitting here talking with my wife with the desktop sitting idle at the desktop. No programs running when BEEP ... what in tha ?? The machine decided to re-boot itself except now it wont boot.

It goes through the POST and BIOS then halts at a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I can get it to boot from the XP disk and get to recovery console run a chkdsk and fixboot. Attempt to boot from the C:/ drive again and same results. Hangs at a _ prompt.

Unfortunatly I dont have another PCIE video card to swap out to see if that is the issue. But I'm thinking it is the fixed disk but I'm not sure.

If it was the disk why would it all of a sudden reboot itself while idle?

[antikristuseke]

I would wager that the HDD has failed.

[Arclight]

That or the HD controller. Normally you would at least get an error from the board saying that it failed to boot from disk or failed to find it. :doh:

*might have a look in the BIOS and see if it detects devices, or durig POST.

[SteamWake]

Well its looking like the boot sector of that drive.

I had another terrabyte drive unused. It is formatting right now.

The 'failed' drive can still be read from but of course with no real backup :doh:

I'm hoping I can atleast recover some of the data off the bad drive.

On the bright side I now have over 2 terrabytes of storage :haha:

[antikristuseke]

if it is just the boot sector you should be able to rewrite that, if not maybe hte warranty on the drive is still good and you can get it replaced.

[SteamWake]

No warranty on the drive that failed its like 4 years old.

Heh... still formatting. Formatting a 1 TB drive takes a loooooong time like 3 or 4 hours.

[krashkart]

How long does a defrag take?

[antikristuseke]

After a format? no time at all:haha:

[Tchocky]

If you pop in an Ubuntu LiveCD you can get a better look at the HDD. That helped me out in December when my brand new HDD kicked the bucket.

Or any Linux distro, I guess. I just happened to have Ubuntu lying around :)

[SteamWake]

I can read and write to the afflicted drive it just wont boot from it.

No need to get other operating systems but thanks.

Had to tear the office apart to find the disk for the mobo to get the NIC adaptor to work before I could do anything. ASUS does not list seperate drivers for their MOBO's just some applet that calls the web. Guess what you cant all the web without the drivers :haha: :stare: :doh: Not sure what you do if you lose that disk.

The new TB drive finally formatted, got winders installed, several hours worth of updates and then some more updates :doh:

All told probably about 8 hours into it. Fortunatly most of it was 'un attended'.

[AVGWarhawk]

I would wager that the HDD has failed.


:yep: