Suddenly cannot boot PC

[Terry Pinnell]

I have an old PC in my shed. It's an 'AMD Athlon(TM) XP1800+', 'ASUS
A7A266-E ACPI BIOS Revision 1011'. It has been running OK. I powered it
down last night, after some hours uninstalling 40-50 unwanted programs
from my C: drive ( originally showing 3% free space and after deletions
10%).

But this morning I cannot get it rebooted. It stops after getting this
far:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/ShedPC-BootProblem-1.jpg

I reset and powered down several times. Also reset BIOS to defaults. But
no change.

I'm at a loss as to what to try next and would much appreciate the
experts' advice please.

 

[Paul]

I have an old PC in my shed. It's an 'AMD Athlon(TM) XP1800+', 'ASUS
A7A266-E ACPI BIOS Revision 1011'. It has been running OK. I powered it
down last night, after some hours uninstalling 40-50 unwanted programs
from my C: drive ( originally showing 3% free space and after deletions
10%).

But this morning I cannot get it rebooted. It stops after getting this
far:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/ShedPC-BootProblem-1.jpg

I reset and powered down several times. Also reset BIOS to defaults. But
no change.

I'm at a loss as to what to try next and would much appreciate the
experts' advice please.

"Simplify"

What that means in this case, is start disconnecting storage devices,
until something works. Since it is IDE, don't forget to
set the jumpers correctly for whatever new config you use.

I'm thinking, the drive you made changes to, is the one holding
things up.

I hope you have backups. Those are Maxtors! I've had two or
three of those fail here. Not bad blocks, just... dead (will
not respond).

Paul

 

[Terry Pinnell]

"Simplify"

What that means in this case, is start disconnecting storage devices,
until something works. Since it is IDE, don't forget to
set the jumpers correctly for whatever new config you use.

I'm thinking, the drive you made changes to, is the one holding
things up.

I hope you have backups. Those are Maxtors! I've had two or
three of those fail here. Not bad blocks, just... dead (will
not respond).

Paul

Thanks Paul.

Reading your reply on getting back home some 6 hours after my first post.

Before I left I opened the case, glared at the innards for a while,
removed and reconnected the more obvious plugs. And it booted!

HOWEVER ... XP would no longer find my data partition (on one of my two
identical 60 GB MAXTOR 6L060J3 HDs). And my system partition C (the OS
partition on the other HD) is now showing only 19 MB free space instead of
the 1.2 GB last night.

I'm now about to head back to the shed.

Could this be connected with my resetting BIOS to default settings?

Whatever little I ever once knew about this stuff, is now a blurry memory.
Primary and Secondary Channels? Master and Slave? etc, etc? IOW, I'm no
techie ;-)

The power and data connections to both HD sockets *seemed* OK this
morning, but as one of my first steps next I'll remove and replace them
again. Any other 'obvious' things I should try please?

 

[philo]

Thanks Paul.

Reading your reply on getting back home some 6 hours after my first post.

Before I left I opened the case, glared at the innards for a while,
removed and reconnected the more obvious plugs. And it booted!

HOWEVER ... XP would no longer find my data partition (on one of my two
identical 60 GB MAXTOR 6L060J3 HDs). And my system partition C (the OS
partition on the other HD) is now showing only 19 MB free space instead of
the 1.2 GB last night.

I'm now about to head back to the shed.

Could this be connected with my resetting BIOS to default settings?

As long as your "boot" drive is detected OK by thew BIOS, even if your
other hard drive is not set in the BIOS, your operating system should
pick it up ok

 

[Terry Pinnell]

As long as your "boot" drive is detected OK by thew BIOS, even if your
other hard drive is not set in the BIOS, your operating system should
pick it up ok

Thanks.

Hour or so later...

Looking in Disk Mgmt it seems that my D partition had somehow got its
letter changed from D to J! I've renamed it D and rebooted. But everything
is now glacially slow. Will report back shortly.

 

[philo]

Thanks.

Hour or so later...

Looking in Disk Mgmt it seems that my D partition had somehow got its
letter changed from D to J! I've renamed it D and rebooted. But everything
is now glacially slow. Will report back shortly.

If your machine is slow, only when you 2nd drive is connected, the drive
is probably in the process of total failure, I'd make sure everything is
backed up.

 

[Paul]

If your machine is slow, only when you 2nd drive is connected, the drive
is probably in the process of total failure, I'd make sure everything is
backed up.

I'm getting that Maxtor feeling...

I would hurry to do the backup now, not pausing for tea and
cookies or anything.

After one bad experience here, where waiting one extra day made it
too late (all data lost), I'd be plugging in the USB external
hard drive right now, and starting the backup. Without powering
down the computer, or rebooting, or anything. Each one of those
operations presents a risk that the next startup of the Maxtor
will be its last.

It's possible the backup won't even complete, but at least
you tried...

Paul

 

[philo]

XX

I'm getting that Maxtor feeling...

I would hurry to do the backup now, not pausing for tea and
cookies or anything.

After one bad experience here, where waiting one extra day made it
too late (all data lost), I'd be plugging in the USB external
hard drive right now, and starting the backup. Without powering
down the computer, or rebooting, or anything. Each one of those
operations presents a risk that the next startup of the Maxtor
will be its last.

It's possible the backup won't even complete, but at least
you tried...

Paul

I once did a data recovery on a drive with severe read/write problems.
It eventually quit.

I let it cool down and tried again and got more data off of it.

After many tries over a period of 24 hours I saved about 95% of the data
then gave the owner a stern lecture on back ups.

I told him to keep anything of importance on a minimum of two different
HD's !