Solved Need some urgent help!

[danny.guitar]

I consider myself pretty good with computers, but I've never had this problem before.

A few days ago the power went out and came back on. Now my mom's computer isn't working. Mine works fine, and so does my sister's, but hers doesn't (it's a pretty old computer).

It's saying no operating system found.

So I popped in the XP CD and was going to try and re-install Windows, but now the Windows setup is saying "No hard drives were detected".

I highly doubt her hard drive went bad.

Any suggestions?

My only idea is make a boot-up floppy disk and try to access the hard drive that way? Dir, Format, etc...and see if it is the hard drive.

Has anyone else had this problem before?

 

[the froot]

i had this problem with my work computer after a power outage, and yes the problem was that the hard drive died. sometimes too many hard boots can cause this to happen.

 

[danny.guitar]

i had this problem with my work computer after a power outage, and yes the problem was that the hard drive died. sometimes too many hard boots can cause this to happen.

That seems like a big coincidence that the hard drive dies soon as the power goes out...

I have a spare 10GB hard drive that I could try and put in, but I'm trying to get some other suggestions before I do that.

Thanks, though.

 

[Mindset]

I think it's a bad MB (master boot record). Whenever the power went out, it might have been saving something in the background that went corrupted, and left the MBR bad, and made the sectors unusable. You might want to put in the 10gb HD, and install windows on that one, and then see if you can access the drive that way, or you might need to reformat that drive while running on the 10GB HD... Also you should check the BIOS to see if it's even showing... IF it is, it'll most likely still be good but would need to be repartitioned/reformated.

 

[danny.guitar]

I think it's a bad MB (master boot record). Whenever the power went out, it might have been saving something in the background that went corrupted, and left the MBR bad, and made the sectors unusable. You might want to put in the 10gb HD, and install windows on that one, and then see if you can access the drive that way, or you might need to reformat that drive while running on the 10GB HD... Also you should check the BIOS to see if it's even showing... IF it is, it'll most likely still be good but would need to be repartitioned/reformated.

I went into the BIOS and it's not even detecting the hard drive there...

So maybe it is bad.

 

[Ethan Winer]

I think it's a bad MB (master boot record).

I agree. Besides having Ghost image backups of all my C: drives (I have five computers), I also have every drive's Sector 0 saved so I can restore in case the above happens. The problem is I had to write my own software to save and load individual sectors. D'oh!

This is exactly the type of program someone should write and give away as freeware.

--Ethan

 

[danny.guitar]

I agree. Besides having Ghost image backups of all my C: drives (I have five computers), I also have every drive's Sector 0 saved so I can restore in case the above happens. The problem is I had to write my own software to save and load individual sectors. D'oh!

This is exactly the type of program someone should write and give away as freeware.

--Ethan

But even the BIOS isn't recognizing the hard drive. Is that a definite sign that it's gone bad? Or could it just be the boot sector part?

I might as well try and format it before downgrading her hard drive.

 

[ssscientist]

This is exactly the type of program someone should write and give away as freeware.

Hmmmm.

If you've already taken the time to write it, it would be a short step for YOU to put it out there as freeware.

KVR has a bunch of freeware utilities and wouldn't mind hosting one more...


.

 

[dgatwood]

I went into the BIOS and it's not even detecting the hard drive there...

So maybe it is bad.

Fried ATA controller on the logic board is probably more likely... or damaged voltage regulation causing one of the power rails from the power supply to be blacked out (which could cause the drive to not see any power even if the logic board did).

Try swapping parts (beginning with the easiest parts) to track down what part is bad. Start by sticking the dubious drive in a different machine. If the drive works in another machine, swap the power supply from a good machine into the dead machine and see if the dead machine comes back to life. If it does, the power supply is fried. If it doesn't, the motherboard is fried.