kgbaseball Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Alright, so I started up my computer last night (it was working fine just a few hours beforehand) and it got past the motherboard screen no problem. But after that, the screen was just black. No more texts, no more anything. I figured it was just an anomoly and rebooted. Same thing. I just left it and decided to work on it this morning. I decided it was probably a hard drive problem since the computer stopped working once the Windows screen should have come up. I have run a bunch of tests and looked at everything I could find on the subject, but still can't figure it out. Here's what I've done: - switched out IDE cables. Made the motherboard screen run faster, but still didn't load Windows. - switched out power supplies. No change. - ran checkdisk from a DOS prompt. Said hard drive was error free, but still didn't load Windows. - used Windows 7 bootdisk to try and repair whatever could have been wrong. Repair processes didn't find anything wrong. - ran a master boot record check. Didn't find anything. - downloaded and ran an AVG antivirus boot disk. Checked out clean. - loaded my hard drive into my parent's computer. Worked great. I could search through the entire hard drive without a problem. No files were missing. The hard drive seems to be functioning fine - it's spinning and makes all the normal noises when I hold it, I can feel it working properly. So what the hell is the problem? I guess reformatting wouldn't be the end of the world since I don't have much of anything worth saving, but I'd obviously like to avoid that. I can't start Windows in safe mode because I can't get that far in the startup process. Any ideas, computer geeks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeveredSoulX Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Download a LiveCD of Ubuntu or something like that, and see if your hard drive is recognized with having info on it. That's probably a good first step Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DylanBradbury Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 I had the same problem about a year ago. It wasn't as sudden as what happened to you though; for me it gradually got worse over time. I replaced the CPU with one from an older computer I had lying around, and it gave me enough time to backup everything and buy a new computer. Also, I should note: my computer was over fifteen years old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkB Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Try another drive in the PC - isolates it to the rest of the system or the drive. Since the drive works fine on your parent's PC, looks like it's a problem with the rest of the system - this test confirms it. Reset the BIOS to factory defaults, noting any changes you may have already made so that you can replicate them. Install the drive on another IDE connection on the motherboard. If you have any other RAM available, swap them with the DIMMs you have installed now. If you don't, switch the DIMM(s) out until you've tested as many DIMMs as you have in each slot in the motherboard. Remove any peripherals - mainly USB devices, but, for the sake of troubleshooting, remove everything but the essentials. Keyboard, mouse, speakers, printers, scanners, etc. Ever seen a keyboard cause a no boot? It's fun, I assure you. Check the jumper on the drive - make sure it's appropriate for the system configuration - how your optical drives etc. are set up. I'm not sure a Windows 7 disc would detect and correct issues with an XP install...it might, but I'd definitely be more inclined to try an XP disc. I can't remember if it would or not. Regardless, though, if the installation boots normally on your parent's PC, it's probably not an issue with the Windows install. Also, if it's a shop-build (Dell, HP etc.), it probably has some form of on-board diagnostics. Try running them. Good luck! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoll Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 i had this happen happen almost exactly what you said about three weeks ago now. do what Mark telling you, but if all these fails you probably have messed up mbr, and given what sound like there is that chance and the only way i get working was installing the os again. if windows 7 all tyour current data will go into a windows.old folder, so you wont lose that stuff, all you do install and half reinstall your programs. the data would still be there assuming its 7 and you have enough hd space. also something not mentioned, if you have dual booting os setup, there maybe something stuck in the duel booting spot, that exactly where at in the process and that's where i had my system at. black screen after the motherboard, but before it was all the way into the os. im not sure and haven't had something like that for xp in awhile, so i dont if makes an windows. old type folder for it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted July 28, 2010 Author Share Posted July 28, 2010 Thanks for the tips, guys. Mark, nothing you suggested worked, so I just ended up reformatting, and so far, so good. Can't imagine what it was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoll Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 kg my guess is you had curutped mbr, as everything failed. had you were able to start over, sorry you lost whatever you had lost throw. i understand the pains of dealing with this stuff as you can see from your dealing and my post Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted July 28, 2010 Author Share Posted July 28, 2010 It's interesting you mentioned that. I tried the mbr repair feature in DOS mode and it said it created a new one for me, but that obviously didn't work. One good thing came from this. My hard drive is 5 years old so it's still an IDE drive. When I upgraded my motherboard last year, I noticed the computer took about 5 minutes to completely boot up. I couldn't find the problem, but when I was troubleshooting today, I discovered that if I switched the IDE cables on my hard drive, the computer booted up in about 30 seconds. Silver lining, I guess. I was lucky this didn't happen during the school year - I could've lost a lot of valuable work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkB Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 Thanks for the tips, guys. Mark, nothing you suggested worked, so I just ended up reformatting, and so far, so good. Can't imagine what it was. Shows what I know, I guess. The symptoms and your results don't make sense, though - if trying another hard drive in the system didn't work, then it obviously wasn't a problem with the original hard drive, since the problem stayed with the system and the original hard drive worked in another system. So, that said, a reinstall shouldn't fix the problem. Unless you had two faults, that is, but even then, you're still left with the other fault after the reinstall which would prevent a successful boot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted July 28, 2010 Author Share Posted July 28, 2010 I didn't try another hard drive in my system - I used mine in my parents' computer and it recognized it perfectly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkB Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 You have no idea how many times I've heard that. That only proves that the hard drive is fine - it tells you nothing about anything else on the system, so you can't diagnose the fault. IDE ports, RAM, CPU...any number of things could have been causing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGunn19 Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 I didn't try another hard drive in my system - I used mine in my parents' computer and it recognized it perfectly. Only thing I've ever seen cause that is if the SATA emulation gets changed in the BIOS. Then even though the hard drive still technically works (like in your parents PC), it wouldn't work in yours because that setting changed....re-install would fix it. It's something you would have had to manually change, a BIOS update could do it too. Glad you got it working again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim825 Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 Just curious - When you said that the hard drive worked fine in your parents computer, did you install it as the boot drive (i.e. the drive that Windows booted off of) or as a secondary drive? I've had similar issues like you described, where I suddenly could not boot up Windows on the hard drive, but I could access all of my data (and back it up), by installing the drive as a secondary drive on a different computer. After I grabbed all of the data, I ended up doing the same thing you did, namely reformatting the drive and reinstalling Windows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted July 28, 2010 Author Share Posted July 28, 2010 Nah, it wasn't a boot drive in my parent's computer - I just wanted to see if I could access the data and make sure it wasn't corrupted or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim825 Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 Nah, it wasn't a boot drive in my parent's computer - I just wanted to see if I could access the data and make sure it wasn't corrupted or something. OK, well something got corrupted on the hard drive, namely something deep in the bowels of Windows. Now that you've reformatted the drive, you'll never know. If the problem occurs again, it could indicate that the drive itself is starting to fail, but you'll just have to wait and see. If you don't already do so, I would recommend periodically backing up your data just in case the drive ever gets into a state where you can't access your data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 Yep, I now have Windows 7 automatically backup my data on an external hard drive once a week. Hopefully that will negate any further problems. Thanks for the help, everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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