Need to Triage My Dead Computer!

[EricG]

Some of you helped me clone my hard drive a while back, which I appreciated
greatly. Now I seem to have a much bigger hardware problem.

Last night I tried to boot my PC (Sony VAIO, 2.8GHz Pentium with HT, 4GB
RAM, 650 GB Seagate HD, NVIDIA 6800 GT video card, running XP SP3). There
were some unusual noises (hard to describe) coming from the area of the hard
drive - clicks and occasional beeps. The machine would not boot. I turned
off power and inserted a startup CD (actually the Seagate Disc Wizard
software disk, supplied by Seagate with the HD but actually made by Acronis).
A startup message (something like "Loading Acronis Software..." came up,
indicating that it was trying to boot from the CD, but nothing happened - the
computer hung at that point and did not finish booting.

What I'm looking for is a good step-by-step method for determining which
component (motherboard, HD, power supply, etc) in my machine has failed, so I
can try to figure it out myself without resorting to Geek Squad, etc. I do
not have access to another desktop at home - only a laptop, so I don't have
any easy way to move components to a different machine.

Thanks in Advance,

Eric

 

[JS]

First check your BIOS settings, look for anything
abnormal, particularly the Boot order which should
be 1) Hard Drive 2) CD.

Then try running Memtest86+, this runs from a boot disk or CD and should
eliminate or
confirm if your ram is bad. You may need to change the BIOS boot order to
boot from
the CD/DVD drive as the first boot device.

Let memtest run for about an hour, if no errors by then at least your ram
should not be the problem. This also would indicate the Power Supply and
CPU are also most likely OK.
..
See: http://www.memtest.org/

 

[EricG]

Thanks for the response.

I did check the boot order last night and it was as you specify below. As I
said, the machine did TRY to boot from the CD drive, but it never finished.

I'll try to do the memtest tonight. Unfortunately, the only bootable CD I
have is the VAIO recovery disc, and I don't know if I can do much with that.
The machine did not come with a Windows CD.

Eric

 

[Paul]

Some of you helped me clone my hard drive a while back, which I appreciated
greatly. Now I seem to have a much bigger hardware problem.

Last night I tried to boot my PC (Sony VAIO, 2.8GHz Pentium with HT, 4GB
RAM, 650 GB Seagate HD, NVIDIA 6800 GT video card, running XP SP3). There
were some unusual noises (hard to describe) coming from the area of the hard
drive - clicks and occasional beeps. The machine would not boot. I turned
off power and inserted a startup CD (actually the Seagate Disc Wizard
software disk, supplied by Seagate with the HD but actually made by Acronis).
A startup message (something like "Loading Acronis Software..." came up,
indicating that it was trying to boot from the CD, but nothing happened - the
computer hung at that point and did not finish booting.

What I'm looking for is a good step-by-step method for determining which
component (motherboard, HD, power supply, etc) in my machine has failed, so I
can try to figure it out myself without resorting to Geek Squad, etc. I do
not have access to another desktop at home - only a laptop, so I don't have
any easy way to move components to a different machine.

Thanks in Advance,

Eric

If you really suspected a hard drive problem, you could disconnect
the data cable from the back of the hard drive. You can leave the
power cable connected to the hard drive if you want. Sometimes the
Molex power connector is pretty hard to get out. My current supply
has an ejection feature in the plastic of the Molex, to make
removal easier.

I'm assuming here, this is an IDE interface setup.

If you have only one IDE device on the cable, use the end data
connector to connect it.

Motherboard ----------------X-------X
|
Single
Drive

Don't do it this way. This causes reflections on the cable and
corrupts data.

Motherboard ----------------X-------X <--- stub causes reflections
|
Single
Drive

When two drives are installed, both connectors can be used.

Motherboard ----------------X-------X
| |
Some Some
Drive Drive

Chances are, the Vaio uses Cable Select jumpering on the drives,
so you shouldn't have to change that. Just check and make sure,
if you're testing the CDROM drive by itself, to use the top figure
above for wiring it up. You can ease the data cable out, by
working it on one side and then the other, being careful not to
bend the pins by pulling it out crooked.

In terms of a troubleshooting chart, you may find a book at the
library, with a full flowchart as to what to do. If you're in a
rush, that may be faster than waiting for us to answer here.

Paul

 

[DL]

If you attempted to boot from the seagate cd, and it hung, well it would do
if the hd was faulty and it could'nt 'locate' the hd.
Go to Seagate site, download Seatools, create the bootable floppy or cd,
insert that in your sony and boot up, see if seatools can access your HD and
test

 

[Peter Foldes]

Try and boot with a Linux distro (Ubuntu or Knoppix) or try Bart's PE