Reformatting drive - not recognized - help!

[Guest]

Hi all,
My out of warranty DELL computer strated hanging on start up. So I decided
to do a clean install.
I used the XP CD that came with it, but when it reached the point of
looking at the drive, it hung for hpurs. I cpuld see at the bottom that it
was an ATAPI drive at 0 ID and so on...but it won't go further. Is there any
way to reformat/recover my hard drive or do I have to replace it with a new
drive?
Thanks

 

[Malke]

Hi all,
My out of warranty DELL computer strated hanging on start up. So I
decided to do a clean install.
I used the XP CD that came with it, but when it reached the point of
looking at the drive, it hung for hpurs. I cpuld see at the bottom
that it was an ATAPI drive at 0 ID and so on...but it won't go
further. Is there any way to reformat/recover my hard drive or do I
have to replace it with a new drive?
Thanks

The "hanging on startup" was an indication of hardware failure. There is
no way of us knowing what exact hardware is failing from the
information you've provided. You can try Dell's diagnostics, and/or go
through these general steps:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

You should tell us what you really want to do because there is a large
difference between "reformatting" and "recovering". Certainly if the
hard drive is healthy you can format it and clean install Windows.
However, I wouldn't do a reinstall until I knew what hardware was
failing. There is no point in applying a software solution
(reinstalling Windows) to a problem caused by bad hardware.

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts
with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).

Malke

 

[Guest]

Hi Malke,
Thank you for your explaination. Your site was informative too. I will ckeck
out the Seagate tool.

I was trying to reformat it so that it was ready for a clean install. If its
hardware failure I will need to buy parts. I would be comfortable swapping
parts but have no spare parts... something I will have to wait to afford.

I thought it was software corruption as this problem started when my son
opened a virus infected file - it came up with a message that told him that
it was infecting files- he then switched the computer off without waiting to
shut down the system in an effort to abort the virus infection.

I guess it could have caused hardware failure too?

 

[Malke]

Hi Malke,
Thank you for your explaination. Your site was informative too. I will
ckeck out the Seagate tool.

I was trying to reformat it so that it was ready for a clean install.
If its hardware failure I will need to buy parts. I would be
comfortable swapping parts but have no spare parts... something I will
have to wait to afford.

I thought it was software corruption as this problem started when my
son opened a virus infected file - it came up with a message that told
him that it was infecting files- he then switched the computer off
without waiting to shut down the system in an effort to abort the
virus infection.

I guess it could have caused hardware failure too?

No, a virus would not have caused hardware failure. It could have been
coincidental with the virus problem or switching off the machine could
have caused file system corruption. It could not have caused a physical
problem with the hard drive.

In your case, I would run the Dell Diagnostics first - you can get them
from Dell's website or if you still have your Dell Resource CD you can
boot with it and run them from there. Also, the color of the lights on
the back of the Dell have a meaning. Do a Google for "Dell [name of
model like Dimension 8400] diagnostic lights".

If the Dell Diagnostics don't give you any definitive answers (and I've
had machines where the Dell Diagnostics showed all was fine and the RAM
was bad for ex.), then test the hard drive. Move on to the rest of the
hardware troubleshooting if you have to.

Malke