Hard drive not detected at boot up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stuart Roberts
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Stuart Roberts

Hi,

Recently I have had the sasser virus that caused my pc to shut down with a
couple of boxes telling me why (with a count down). I believe I have got rid
of it but my PC hangs after about 20 minutes and eventually restarts of I
have to re-start it. The hang usually coincides with a loud clunk from the
hard drive, then nothing.

I re-start but the boot sequence stops as it cannot detect hard drive, or if
it gets on to the second screen, it says it cannot find to boot record, etc.
Even with a boot disk it will go to a black screen saying there is a hard
drive / hard disk error.

I have to turn it off for about 15 minutes and try again. Then I might get
anther 15 - 20 minutes use before a clunk, hang, re-start, can't boot.

My hard drive is 'clunking' a lot more every now and then and my user
profile is not working. New ones I have put on will not save any settings.
The whole thing is a mess.

Should I just get a new hard drive or try formatting my current one? It is 4
years old, 30Gb.

Thanks
Stu
 
Stuart Roberts said:
Hi,

Recently I have had the sasser virus that caused my pc to shut down with a
couple of boxes telling me why (with a count down). I believe I have got rid
of it but my PC hangs after about 20 minutes and eventually restarts of I
have to re-start it. The hang usually coincides with a loud clunk from the
hard drive, then nothing.

I re-start but the boot sequence stops as it cannot detect hard drive, or if
it gets on to the second screen, it says it cannot find to boot record, etc.
Even with a boot disk it will go to a black screen saying there is a hard
drive / hard disk error.

I have to turn it off for about 15 minutes and try again. Then I might get
anther 15 - 20 minutes use before a clunk, hang, re-start, can't boot.

My hard drive is 'clunking' a lot more every now and then and my user
profile is not working. New ones I have put on will not save any settings.
The whole thing is a mess.

Should I just get a new hard drive or try formatting my current one? It is 4
years old, 30Gb.

Thanks
Stu
Click to expand...

If your hard disk makes clunking noises then it's probably on the
way out. This has nothing to do with any virus. Download & run
the free diagnostic program that your hard disk manufacturer
makes available on his home site.
 
Looks ur HDD is getting ready to die. Perhaps it is the right time to get a
new one. Try going to the bios and doing a fresh detect (automatic) or
manual if you are comfortable with the bios. After that you can try a fresh
format and reinstall.
 
A "loud clunk" is a very bad sign for any hard drive. That alone would tell
me to get a new hard drive.

If you get a retail hard drive, it will come with disk preparation software,
usually on a CD. Be sure that your BIOS is set to boot from CD before hard
drive, insert the CD, then power on. otherwise, you could use the
traditional toold FDISK and FORMAT to prepare the disk. Or, you could run
the XP recovery console directly from the XP CDROM, and prepare the disk.

I suggest that you take this oppertunity to create multiple partitions, such
as C:\ for XP and programs, D:\ for personal files, and E:\ for scratch
space, including the XP paging file and backups that you might make of C:\
and D:\. (Of course, external backups would be better, but those do not
need to be done as often, since bad installs/uninstalls are usually the
prime cause of wishing you could go back in time.)

A couple of things to think about:

XP, pre-SP1 can only handle disks up to about 137 Gig. XP with SP-1 can
handle disks >1000Gig, but only after something called 48-bit LBA is
enabled. But, to enable that, you need to first load XP on a partition
below the 127 Gig limit, then edit the registry.

Just because XP can handle larger disks does not mean that your PC can
handle them. Check for any BIOS limitations related to your
motherboard/BIOS. If you do not have a detailed motherboard manual, go to
the motherboard (or PC maker) website and find one, or similar info.

If you have a motherboard/BIOS limitation, and if no BIOS update is
available, consider side-stepping the problem by installing a an ATA-100/133
PCI adapter card. Such a card has its own BIOS, and own limits. Today
those limits are well beyond 137Gig. I installed one of these on a 1998
vintage PC and was able to upgrade the disks significantly. Also, depending
on the current speed of your disk controller, such a board can improve disk
performance in conjunction with a new disk. I happened to use a Maxtor
adapter, but there are several others on the market, and they are fairly
cheap. Any large PC store (e.g., CompUSA) should carry these in their hard
drive section.

I assume that you own a full retail copy of XP, or XP upgrade plus CD from a
previous windows operating system (98, ME, 2000). If instead you have an
OEM CD (e.g., Dell, Gateway), that may not allow you to reinstall XP on new
hardware, or may have some "traps" or require some "tricks". If OEM XP,
contact the PC maker for details on how to replace the hard drive.

If te retail version, when you install XP it will ask you to "activate".
When you do that over the internet the activation may fail, depending on
what else has changed since the last activation. Do not panic, just dial
the 800 number that will appear on the screen and explain to the Microsoft
representative what happened. He should then exchange long codes with you
and the XP installation should be activated. I had to do this once and the
MS representative was very helpful; the whole affair required about 5
minutes.
 
Thanks for all your help. Sound like I need to invest in a new hard drive.

Any tips on which one? I really only need a 120GB max HDD. I am looking at a
Western Digital Caviar. It is the right price for me, big space and a decent
make. What do you suggest?

Stu
 
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