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Hard Drive or motherboard failure - argh, help!
Abunai
Top  #1 Print Post
Posted on 06-07-2009 21:26
heya,

Today I created a new partition on my hard drive to install windows XP (as i had issues with my mouse in TF2 in Windows 7, so was dual booting XP to see if it was just the RC of 7 playing up), which went fine - until I got a powercut. Now, this was just before the installation, so the new partition I created was formatted in NTFS (quick). This is where it went wrong.

I installed windows on this partition, and it got to the point of the first reboot - hardly into the process atall. It rebooted, POST was fine, until it got past checking NVRAM - at which point I was greeted with the message "Problem loading operating system" or something 99% similar.

I had to get some lunch at that point so I just shut it all off. When I returned, the first 10-ish attempts at booting were failures - the speaker on my motherboard broke ages ago so I don't know whether it "beeped" or not, but the lights on my graphics card flashed once as they should do during a normal boot. The strange thing is, I did not get any video signal atall, through either port on the graphics card.

Afterwards, I somehow got POST to appear - up to a point. It displayed all the way down to the part where it lists

Quote


Auto Detect : Primary Master IDE Hard Drive
Auto Detect : 3rd Master ATAPI CDROM
Auto Detect : 3rd Slave IDE Hard Drive

Primary Master : MAXTOR STM 3320820AS 3.AAE
UltraDMA Mode 5. S.M.A.R.T capable but disabled.


The MAXTOR is my primary SATA HDD, with the OS and stuff on it.
At this point POST stops, forever - no more devices turn up beyond the above mentioned. If i press a function key to enter setup or boot selector, the text changes in the POST screen but the action does not occur itself.

If I unplug the SATA hard drive, POST continues all the way through - but there is no OS on my other HDD, only music (so it says, restart with stuff in drive etc etc, standard notification).

This makes me think, during the powercut (or i fucked up the partitioning, somehow :/) that the hard drive got raped - or the motherboard (SATA / IDE detector) got raped, causing the inability to boot.

Now, I do not have another SATA compliant motherboard to test the MAXTOR HDD on (however I can get a friends spare one in a few days, but I have an etf2l match on thursday Shock), any ideas what I can do?
In any case - something is broken, I just need to figure out what. I can't really afford replacing a £100 motherboard or a new £40 hard drive.

Thanks for any help in advance, if you read this wall of text.

The specs I am currently running are (for reference)

Intel core 2 duo E4440 @ 2.0GHz
Generic 2GB Kingston DDR2 RAM, stock speeds
ASRock Conroe 945pl-glan
ATI Radeon HD4850, stock
Corsair 550W PSU, i have enough on the 12v Rails (cant remember exact figure though)
Maxtor 320GB SATA HDD - Primary, OS
Seagate 150GB IDE HDD - Secondary, Music
Shitty DVD Drive

My rig at home is (i take MAXTOR HD for use as primary)

Intel Core 2 Quad 9650 @ 3.0GHz
Corsair 4GB DDR2 1066MHz ram
ASUS P5Q PRO P45 motherboard
ATI Radeon HD4850 (in crossfire if i take my flat's 4850 home)
Corsair 650W PSU, again fine on 12v Rails
The same Maxtor 320GB SATA HDD - Primary OS
Shitty DVD Drive.

Again, thank you.
i32.tinypic.com/1zqpwyv.jpg
 
Hunt0r
Top  #2 Print Post
Posted on 07-07-2009 17:45
if the post locks up with the HDD plugged in and when you unplug it the computer completes post it sounds like the HDD has had it
 
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gori11a
Top  #3 Print Post
Posted on 08-07-2009 11:43
Does seem like yr hdd is fried, have you tried another SATA port?
 
Abunai
Top  #4 Print Post
Posted on 08-07-2009 11:56
Yeah, i got a small XP installation working on an old IDE hard drive temporarily and i'm borrowing a friends hard drive later today so i'll find out which part is dead - thanks for any help though Smile
i32.tinypic.com/1zqpwyv.jpg
 
sick-lizard
Top  #5 Print Post
Posted on 08-07-2009 12:34
you could grab a live linux distro that runs from cd/dvd if your not sure to test components but as others have said does sounds like dead/dying disk rather than mobo
 
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gooroo
Top  #6 Print Post
Posted on 08-07-2009 20:19
could just as easily be a badgered SATA controller on the motherboard (just making sure you check all possibilities before you run out and buy anything!)
SATA is hotplug, so you can try plugging the disk in whilst you are booted into windows on an IDE hard disk, or live linux install (ubuntu install cd has a live version)... that'll at least get you past the POST problem?
 
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