Major Problem!!

I was pursuaded to upgrade my safe comfortable Win98 Pentium 200 with 13Gb HDD and 64Mb of RAM to a monster with 300Gb HDD Pentium 4 3.2GHz and 2GB of RAM and Win XP Pro. I even understood the old system to sort most probs.

Anyway a friend (expert?) of a friend built it for me and its been OK for about 3 mths. Yesterday when booting up the system went up to the IDE scan and then nothing on the screen. He has had a look at it and thinks for whatever reason the HD is blank. It is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (ST 3300831AS). We have replaced the lead (a serial ATA type or something). However it is finding and correctly naming the drive in when you access Setup?? He installed an IDE HDD in it on different motherboard slots (excuse if I confuse terms) and it booted OK. However it also won't boot from a floppy or the Win XP CD even set as primary boot. I downloaded the Seatools utility floppy from the site and still won't boot. My friend says it won't because it still needs to read off the HD? I remember I am sure that Win95 and 98 would boot off a floppy alone so that you could at least search the drives for files. So I think it may be something else?? Maybe the ATA slots on the Motherboard...we have tried both.

Holding the HDD I can feel a smooth wind up but as it goes through the first splash screen before IDE scan you feel some slight pulses. Similarly just as it should boot, a pulse and then no screen display, but it keeps on spinning.

He is recommending returning the HD for warranty replacement, but I am afraid that I have some files on there (I have a small business) that I need. I know I should have backed up onto something else but it was only just new and I have never had a HD go on me before(no excuse I know). I am especially concerned that it may not be the HDD??

Would really appreciate any advice, especially if you think my HD is OK !!!!

THanks,
Rod

Connnect the drive as a slave boot from other drive see if you can read files on it

I only have one HDD. The rest are floppy, DVD ROM and DVD RW.
Rod

Either purchase a new hard drive and try it or take your prsent hard drive to another pc where you could connect it as a slave drive. If you get it to running as a slave on any machine you could then save the files you need. If it is a motherboard problem on your pc you can trouble shoot that with another hard drive in your own machine. I keep a old hard drive with win 98 on it just for checking out motherboards or connectiond on a pc

You probably need to go into your BIOS Setup and change the boot order of your drives. You should see which key you need to press during the initial POST screen immediately after you power up. Once you're in Setup, go to "Advanced BIOS settings" or similar, and change the boot order to:

1st boot device = Floppy

2nd boot device = CDROM

3rd boot device = HDD 0

Then you should be able to boot from the Windows CD or a floppy disk without any problems.

Tried changing the boot order and still would not boot even if floppy or DVD ROM was selected as first. Same symptom happens. IDE scan and then blank screen. When the Seagate utility was tried to boot as a floppy all I got was a blinking cursor at top,
Rod

This sounds much more like a failing motherboard or IDE controller than failing drive. Try to find a second system to install your drive in to prove it's working. Your motherboard should still be under warranty so replacing it should only be a big hassle.

Thanks Professor for some hope the HDD may be OK. As I said before an IDE connected HDD booted up OK on mine, but my HDD has a serial SAT connection to different slots on the MB. Silly question but I suppose they receive information from the HDD through different circuitry, so the IDE drive works and mine doesn't? Does the IDE controller only work the IDE slots?

Yes, your understanding is correct. You could even buy a converter if you wanted to connect the SATA drive to the PATA(IDE) controller. But the sooner you establish this as a motherboard problem the sooner you can get your replacement ordered under warranty.

OK here's a revelation!! The computer will only boot on a floppy or CD if the data ATA cable is disconnected from the HDD.

Firstly I managed to get the Seagate Utility to just start and then pushed on the data cable. I did the various diagnostics and no problems came up. I printed a report on the HDD and most is meaningless to me. One thing which may be significant.....IT says CURRENT CAPACITY 16514064 sectors and TOTAL CAPACITY 586072368 sectors. Later it says FULL SCAN (0 to 586072368) - Passed. Even though it went into a DOS prompt after exiting it displayed a C: drive but on doing a dir was very small only about 7.5 MB. I think it was a virtual drive created by the utility and not the real HDD.

Now my HDD is partioned into two C: at 78GB and D: at 191GB. I wrote this down some time ago. It adds to 269GB. Don't know where the remaining of the 300GB went to but that was how it was after installation. Windows system is on the C; partition and most other data and programs on D: I don't know how all this translates into sectors but I do know its a FAT32 system.

Further I got a win98 disk to load (without ATA cable attached) and tried to slip it on quick....but it wouldn't detect C: drive just what it called D and E which are the two DVD ROM and RW.

Also got the Win XP CD to load (ATA detached) and again quickly slipped it on. This went into the instal screen. However the option for Recovery console when tried said "An error occurred during directory enumeration".

Trying for a proper install first brought up C: PARTITION 1- 131070MB Disk 0 Id 0 and bus 0. That was the only entry.

So it appears attaching the ATA cable anywhere (I even tried it at the slave connections on the MB) will not allow anything to boot.

I know I'm going around in circles but I want to get enough background info and hopefully good educated guesses from you blokes, as the shop I bought this stuff from is hopefully open tomorrow (Easter Saturday), and I will first ring them up and then go over. What I don't want is to send a HDD away for testing and it comes back as OK so its something else. Also unfortunately I will be away with work interstate for about a month so want something useful accomplished in my absence. Also because of this I haven't got time to hunt up another friendly PC with ATA facility.

Thanks for your patience,
Rod

I see no reason they shouldnt replace you mother board. They should have a pc to check your hard drive in.

I agree. I think replacing the motherboard is the way to go. If it works, then you will have verified that the HDD is OK and it was a motherboard problem. This is also something that you can do without sending off one of your components.

If it doesn't work, then you can still send off your HDD. However, you need to copy your data before sending off your HDD because whatever is on your HDD is likely to be wiped in the process of testing the HDD.

Please keep us posted and Good Luck.

Cheers,

Linda

Just as an FYI, the difference in size of the drive is because the drive manufacturers and the ISO organisation use the decimal version of a GB (1,000,000,000 bytes), while programmers and Windows use the Binary version (1,073,741,824 bytes).

300,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 279GB.

Well I bit the bullet and took it backfrom whence the parts came. I needed some sort of analysis because I'm away for a month and I want something useful to happen in the meantime. Had to pay $150 because it is Easter Saturday and half day closing but.............they say the HDD is OK...hooray hooray. Still won't boot from a floppy or HDD but it did from a CD (which it wouldn't with me). Anyway they suspect a controller (on the MB I assume) and need more time.

Thats OK cause at least things will happen and if it is a warranty on the MB it will be done for my return.

Thanks for all the help and good advise.
Rod

Does your system have an internal dial-up modem?
If it does, remove it and try rebooting.
I have had three customers in the last month with similar problems, 2 were due to storm activity causing modem failure the other was 'One Wire' satellite broadband install causing lockup of the dial-up modem (this was able to be reset by unplugging and reinserting).

Symptoms are that system will not boot past initial POST.

Dennis

Hi Dennis,
Thanks for the tip. It would have been worth trying but the horrible thing is someone else's prob for the time being. Here I am feeling cosy on my old puny Win98 machine which had been relegated to the garage mainly to play music CD's !!! The last posts I did were on someones laptop. So I got the old girl going.....main nuisance was downloading and re=installing Zone Alarm and Anti-Virus which I had deleted. Anyway it will do for the wife whilst I am away.

Yes my problematic machine had an internal modem. Haven't had much lightning around here recently and it was still on the old dial-up....but as I said it would have been worth a try. Will ring them on Tuesday after the hols and suggest it.
Thanks again,
Rod

Okay, hope it works out.

Dennis

You could get a knoppix disk and run it to see if it will boot up and see what is on the hard drive.

... and here's a link: http://www.knoppix.net/