startup problems in windows vista home premium

[Canucklehead111]

I very recently received a brand new pre-built pc as follows:
-vista home premium
-intel core2duo 6850
-2g ram
-Gigabyte p35 mainboard
-Seagate 320 gb sata II hdd
-nvidia 8800gt

The system was working fine. I hadn't done or installed anything hinky that
I can think of. Before it failed, I was getting routed to the "windows did
not start normally" screen before it would boot to the os, but it would
always boot and perform without any glitches other than that.

One day, I went to boot up, and am now caught in a death loop of startup.
The bios checks are fine with no errors and when Vista boots up, there is an
immediate blue screen (flashes 1/10th of a second) then I go to the windows
repair centre.

When I run the repair centre, the message I get is that Vista cannot repair
this problem. When the screen comes up asking which os you want to repair,
there is none selected. When I click on the "details" tab, the result
message says "no hard drive". None of the other options under Vista repair
have worked either.

I also tried the bootrec.exe with no success, with "total identified windows
installations:0" as the resulting message.

The hard drive is recognized on the bios as its proper size etc. I checked
the connections and they are fine.

I also attempted to load the drivers for the hard drive controller to see if
this would help, and it hasn't-still no hard drive detected.

The only thing I haven't done is run the seagate hdd diagnostic as I have
been having problems getting the iso image to start up with.

I am thinking I have a hard drive failure on my hands because the drive was
working properly then stopped working. I have checked a number of the
knowledge base articles and they don't seem to apply.

Any comments are appreciated. I am about to box the thing up for repair
which will put me out of service for a couple weeks.

Thanks,
Corey

 

[Harryc]

I very recently received a brand new pre-built pc as follows:
-vista home premium
-intel core2duo 6850
-2g ram
-Gigabyte p35 mainboard
-Seagate 320 gb sata II hdd
-nvidia 8800gt

The system was working fine. I hadn't done or installed anything hinky
that
I can think of. Before it failed, I was getting routed to the "windows
did
not start normally" screen before it would boot to the os, but it would
always boot and perform without any glitches other than that.

One day, I went to boot up, and am now caught in a death loop of startup.
The bios checks are fine with no errors and when Vista boots up, there is
an
immediate blue screen (flashes 1/10th of a second) then I go to the
windows
repair centre.

When I run the repair centre, the message I get is that Vista cannot
repair
this problem. When the screen comes up asking which os you want to
repair,
there is none selected. When I click on the "details" tab, the result
message says "no hard drive". None of the other options under Vista
repair
have worked either.

I also tried the bootrec.exe with no success, with "total identified
windows
installations:0" as the resulting message.

The hard drive is recognized on the bios as its proper size etc. I
checked
the connections and they are fine.

I also attempted to load the drivers for the hard drive controller to see
if
this would help, and it hasn't-still no hard drive detected.

The only thing I haven't done is run the seagate hdd diagnostic as I have
been having problems getting the iso image to start up with.

I am thinking I have a hard drive failure on my hands because the drive
was
working properly then stopped working. I have checked a number of the
knowledge base articles and they don't seem to apply.

Any comments are appreciated. I am about to box the thing up for repair
which will put me out of service for a couple weeks.

Thanks,
Corey

Seagate has a diagnostic called 'Sea Tools'. Download it from their website
and run it to verify your drive.
Harryc
--

 

[anonymous]

It does sound like hard drive failure. Just because the BIOS can see it
does not mean that the drive itself is OK. You could have corruption in the
MFT. The Windows did not start normally message is a clue - the drive could
have been failing and alerting you to that fact. If you have a Linux live
CD you can boot to that and see if you can read any part of your drive.
This will not fix it but, if readable, you will be able to copy data to a
flash drive.

 

[Canucklehead111]

Thanks. I got my act together and got the iso of seatools and the drive
failed the short test. The system is now going back for fixing. Luckily I
have the data backed up. Thanks for the responses.
Corey