It wouldn't hurt to tell us a bit in detail about this
system, concise list of major components including drives,
drive interface type and position (PATA master or SATA,
etc), PSU make model wattage... and if anything on the
system had been changed recently, though perhaps you mention
that below.
This is the same system we discussed in the post: "SATA Controller
Recommendation?". The drive is a PATA drive on an IDE motherboard via
a special connector chip: HW629 Rev.2.0 WD952H-1. (That converter may
actually be the problem).
My system is as follows:
-----------------------------------
HP Pavilion 7955
512 Ram
Hitachi Deskstar(HDT722516DLA380) SATA(on a single connector cable).
Power Supply: Bestec # ATX 1956D 220W(Is 200W enough for my system?).
Motherboard: Dublin (Rev. D)
CD Writer and DVD Player(at the end of the same two connector cable).
So the usual internet sluggishness is something you feel was
normal, not relevant to the failure?
I can't say. All four internet systems I've ever used on a regular
basis started to become sluggish within two weeks after I got them.
The sluggishness includes general everything. loading pages, opening
up desktop folders, ect.).
I do have AVG Anti-Virus installed, and also a Firewall.
This is typically a failure to find a viable boot device
and/or boot sector. IF your system is old enough that the
battery might've worn out, loss of CMOS settings could also
result in it defaulting to trying a different boot device,
so you should enter the bios and see if the system clock is
correct (if shown), if it is set to what appears to be the
right boot device.
I had already checked the system clock, and it is still correct.
What other boot options do you have? Generally it would be
time to run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on it
if nothing else works, typically that would be done from
floppy, (or with no floppy, those files transferred to a
bootable USB drive (flash thumbdrive perhaps) or bootable
CD/DVD you make on another system.
I have a Sandisk Cruzer 4.0, but in the limited time I have at the
local library computer, I don't know when I'd be able to search for
these things.(I'm rushing just to post this, and don't know when would
be the next time get online).
Also open system and check cables, but it seems unlikely one
would spontaneously completely fail while exhibiting no
intermittent problems prior to this. It is possible a
failing PSU can degrade stability to the point where it
fails to find a boot device but less likely than a boot
device (itself) problem.
I had checked the cables a few times. In fact I just took the drive
out to make sure I had it's info correct, and now after putting
everything back together the drive is not detected.("Operating system
not found"). I know it is still getting power, and all cables were
checked again multiple times.
The boot order as it is now is as follows:
+Hard Drive
Bootable Add-in Cards
CD-Rom
+Removable Devices
Legacy Floppy Drives
Newtwork Boot
BTW. The sequence of the lights I see when I power up are as follows:
CD, DVD, Floppy.(There is no light for the hard drive).
You could try unplugging any other boot devices it detects,
there is a slim chance it might help but normally changing a
bios setting would have equivalent result.
Without further details it's difficult to say what happened
in the prior system but generally it is not common to loose
anything on a hard drive from clearing CMOS (resetting
bios).
Or the drive itself is failing which basically means it
can't even get far enough to read the boot sector. Given a
Windows CD (assuming windows OS) you could try to do a
repair install, or restore a backup (though some ways of
doing this wipe out existing data). The safest most
thorough method of handling this is to pull out the hard
drive and try it in another system - booting that other
system to it's original HDD only trying to read, never
write, to this drive. Doing so you remove the bios from the
equation, have a working system with which to try and pull
files off, run diagnostics, etc... or if the 2nd system
can't use the drive at all it's a more likely indication the
drive had failed - but more info about the system could be
important, for example if an old system that had need for a
drive overlay to access > 128GB HDD, then booting a
different system from different drive won't load that
overlay.
I actually have a new Windows XP disk, but the XP install presently on
the drive was from a different disk I don't have access to.(I'm not
sure if that would be a problem).
If the hard drive isn't set as the first boot device do
that. Make note of any changes, since you should not need
change anything unless the battery were low or other board
defect or failure caused loss of settings - but this is
usually a perpetual problem not something that suddenly
happens once after it had ran ok. I don't suppose there
were any electrical storms in your area that night that
could have put a surge through the system?
Nope.
A virus could overwrite the boot sector, but by installing
drive in another system you would be able to scan it with
the manufacturer's diagnostics, just don't try to boot the
drive in a different system.
Not even in a system that has no other drive?
Odds are probably highest your drive simply failed to some
extent. If the data is valuable (I hope you made a backup
but if not on the backup...) then the next thing you should
do (leaving drive and system unpowered in case a problem
were getting worse) is prepare a different system having
enough free space on it's HDD to copy off the data, then
install the drive and first boot the OS and try copying off
data - before running diagnostics, before chkdsk or
scandisk, etc. Avoid writing anything to the drive
including being cautious about any windows settings that
could try to put a pagefile on a different drive, logs, or
whatever. Best to examine the config of the host system
prior to transferring a drive into it.
I wouldn't know how to prevent Windows from writing to the drive but
obviously I have to try something.
Thanks a lot.
Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
