Pc died

[Heathenpeddler]

I'll not be around much for a while, my pc has died. It's decided there are no files on my hard drive - at all!

I've tried a different hard drive and a different motherboard/processor without success so I'm on pc-share with my partner.

This is a complete shock. I've lost tonnes of recent pics and work (yeah I know, backup...) and will have to rework loads of stuff.

Right now I don't have a clue what's happened or why but I'll keep plugging away at it.

 

[Hunter_zero]

I'll not be around much for a while, my pc has died. It's decided there are no files on my hard drive - at all!

I've tried a different hard drive and a different motherboard/processor without success so I'm on pc-share with my partner.

This is a complete shock. I've lost tonnes of recent pics and work (yeah I know, backup...) and will have to rework loads of stuff.

Right now I don't have a clue what's happened or why but I'll keep plugging away at it.

Check your PSU.

John

 

[locum76]

and check for screws down the back of the motherboard.

 

[alpha_centaur]

PM me if you want and I'll give you my address and try to recover the documents photos off the hard drive for you if you want.

 

[fred gordon]

Its great to know that you can also get assistance with technology on this website. Really impressed but I hope I never have to use it. :You_Rock_

 

[Bushcraft4life]

I feel sad for saying this but i actually build the things . Heathenpeddler if you could provide me with the exact symptoms e.g. not booting ect i may be able to help.
Cheers
Jay

 

[andyn]

I feel sad for saying this but i actually build the things .
Cheers
Jay

Aye, join the club - been in IT for 57 years and counting (feels like it anyway ) . Get the feeling there are a lot of IT people on here.

 

[Heathenpeddler]

Thanks everyone!

What happened was I left the pc on when I went out to the shop to get some walking boots. When I got back the screen was saying "Operating system not found". The pc seemed quite hot so I turned it off for a while. I tried a reboot and it took a while but came back with the same message.

I tried booting from my windows cd and tried to repair the windows install. It booted me straight out to a dos prompt so I ram a DIR command and it came back with a grand total of 5 files. No directories, no folders, just 5 apparently zero byte files. I tried a different hard drive, one from an old Win 98 pc. This gave me "Invalid system disk".

I have recently swapped the motherboard for one given me by my father-in-law so I figured there might be a problem there. Changed it back and got the same result. So far I've tried 2 hard drives, 2 moherboards and 3 processors (I have a spare that fits the newer board). All give me the same result, so I don't know what is wrong. The only thing I can come up with is the power supply. Maybe the PSU fan isn't working right? Dunno.

I'm going to try putting the hard drive in the other machine (the old one, it's only a 300 cyrix ) to see if it can at least read it, see if it can find anything!

 

[bent-stick]

If you can't see anything on the disk gave a look at GetDataBack.

http://www.runtime.org/

I've used it a couple of time to recover completely screwed hard disks (they weren't being recognised by the system at all) and it got back 90% ir so both times'

It's not free but not as expensive as going to a data recovery place.

 

[andyn]

Just a little hint, if your going to move the Hard disk to another machine, then add it as a slave drive...eg don't try to boot from it but add it as a second disk...You wil need to move the "jumper" on the damaged disk to specify it as a slave drive.

Swapping Hard drives round with Windows installations wont be that successful if they are going into machines with different hardware in, so if you just add it as a slave disk then you wil be able to see what data is on it.

Sounds like you will need to try some data recovery and then reformat and rebuild the windows installation from start though.

 

[ArkAngel]

Could be a PSU problem,

My 600w PSU blew the 12V rails a while back. The machine would start as the 24V rails going into the motherboard was fine but there was no/negliable power to the hard disk so no booting. Although the fan was working OK, it may be worth another check to see if this is the case.

Fortunately a new PSU got me back up and running with no loss of data <phew> although these days i always back up as i too work in the IT industry and have no faith in the damn things whatsoever

Failing that yes go for a data recovery tool if it is the case that your hard drive has died.

If the machine felt hotter than normal you may have cooked something, if you can try to replace each component in turn to see if that is the problem, and don't forget the RAM. Everyone thinks that RAM is indestructable but i have had sticks fail on me in the past.

 

[dave k]

Fortunately a new PSU got me back up and running with no loss of data <phew> although these days i always back up as i too work in the IT industry and have no faith in the damn things whatsoever

Funny this - I work in IT and I have not many problems with computers... Perhaps this is because I use unix though

 

[dave k]

If you manage to figure out if any of your components are bust, give me a shout / PM. I've got quite a few components knocking about from loads of spare PC's.

 

[Heathenpeddler]

PM me if you want and I'll give you my address and try to recover the documents photos off the hard drive for you if you want.

Thanks for that, it may well come to it as I've not had any luck getting it to run at all so far.

Well, this is me on the backup machine. I have managed to get it running Win XP as it would not accept the network card in win 98. It only just runs though as it's an old 300mhz cyrix processor which is just awful as far as speed goes! But it's online and a little of my stuff came with it as it was the secondary drive from my old pc. I'll have to see how much, but at least I'm back!

 

[ArkAngel]

Funny this - I work in IT and I have not many problems with computers... Perhaps this is because I use unix though

Of that i have no doubt

My boss asked me to build 3 new pc's for the workplace a while back 2 new workstations and a server. I agreed to do this on the understanding that "if something goes bang, call me i'll fix it. If something doesn't work because of a program, get lost! i consider any PC to be inherintly broken the second i put a windows disk into it!!!"

I have considered unix in the past but i think it would invlove having to 'uinlearn' too much. I have no experience with that type of operating system at all. I frequently get asked about Macs at work. The last time i used a mac it was a small beige box with a powered eject disk drive, black and white screen and the mouse had one button on it!!!

 

[Brendan]

Try putting the hard drive in the freezer for a couple of hours then trying to boot it.
Sounds strange but sometimes works if all else fails.

 

[dave k]

Try putting the hard drive in the freezer for a couple of hours then trying to boot it.
Sounds strange but sometimes works if all else fails.

You can also give the HD a bash if it doesn't spin up. These both free the platters if they've had a nasty crash and are stuck.

You can also drop it flat onto a table at a height of about 5-8cm - but you have to make sure you drop it completly flat.

 

[lardbloke]

It sounds like your MFT has been erased or become faulty. Hard drives are basically like a box with lots of old LP's inside. The computer stores your stuff on the discs (platters) and finds the information using an arm, rather like your old record player. If this jumps (by bashing it) then the head can crash into the platter and cause damage (hard drives can take a lot of shock damage, but there is always that one time!!). As said somewhere above the easiest way to recover lost files, is to run your old drive as a slave and then try and recover your files using a file recoverey prog. There are lots of commands etc than could be used under XP, but not worth it if you have little command of the system.

A system can crash for any number of reasons. During my time as an IT tech, I have had transistors blow, holes burnt through heat sinks etc and I always treat the machine rather like a car. A user will come in with the old line "it doesnt work", then you have to get your head under the bonnet and start pulling parts out one by one and replacing them with new ones. There are more diagnostic methods, but if hardware goes down, then its usually hardware based.

If anyone needs any advice on IT related stuff, I may be able to help and if I dont then there is always others....