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hello hello

basically on thursday i came back from uni to home and had to set up my (slightly dodgy) computer for radio. plugged everything in etc, switched it on. but then it kinda froze on the blue windows login screen, where you enter your password etc. so i held down the power button for however many seconds until it switched off...then i switched it back on again, and it only lasts for a few seconds, then this message comes up saying

"disk drive failure, press ctrl alt delete to restart"

press ctrl alt delete and it restarts, but the same thing just happens again

anyone got any idea of what i can do myself to fix this? got a lot of my old music and whatnot on there, so its quite important to get the data off

thanks in advance

Might be a BIOS thing, if you lucky.

Next time you start it up hold down the key to get into the BIOS settings - it's usually DEL or F2. When you gets the menu up look for the settings for the drives, or just head for the option to restore default settings. Good luck, and bear in mind it might not be a problem with the hard drive even if you can't get it going - it could be the CD/DVD or it could be a problem with the drive controller on the motherboard.

worst case scenario you can almost always get your data back, unless you accidently smashed your hard drive into many pieces, no worries.

otherwise theres an endless list of things to try that you can find info about on the microsoft sites.

id probably try -

1. make sure theres nothing usb plugged in, no floppy disk or cd in the computer, sometimes these cause problems, unlikely but try it.

2. check BIOS settings like masstronaut said

3. if you still have a windows cd, stick that in and try to get the computer to boot from that (contradicts number 1 but whatever). some computers will automatically try and boot a cd if there is one at startup, otherwise go to BIOS (number 2) and change the boot order sequence so that cd-rom is first on the list. following the instructions on the cd you can repair a windows installation.

theres tons of other things you can try, doesn't sound particularly serious to be honest. theres tons of information online like i say. sorry if this hasn't been particularly useful, im hungover and just writing a couple of things that come to mind.

Open it up and unplug every drive then turn it back on. It'll fail obviously because there's no OS. Then turn it off and stick only the drive with Windows on back in, and turn it on. If it works, great, now plug every drive back in one at a time, restarting the computer every time. You'll find the one that's causing the error.

If it's the Windows drive that's fucked, you're looking at a reinstall. It could just be a small hard drive error in a critical bit of data, but a reinstall can reformat the drive and either fix it or work around it.

If that doesn't work...

actually i got it wrong, the error message is

"disk drive read error" instead of a failure

don't know if that changes anything...

cheers for the advice so far, much appreciated

Sounds like it could just be a corrupted boot sector. Use a boot disk or some other method to get a command prompt and run chkdsk/f. Should fix any problems with file system if that's what's wrong. Are you getting a blue screen of death or does it just give you the error during POST? If it gives it to you during POST, then it could be BIOS setting/controller/cable/jumper problem. If you get the BSOD, then it's probably file system and you should be able to repair with chkdsk/f.

this is sounding quite good for you. Hope you get it sorted.

This happened to me about a year back.

I tried reformatting and it wasn't having it the whole hard drive died.
Was a shame really it was quite expensive and bigger then what I have now!


If you haven't tried reformatting, try it if you can that is..Unless you have things you reallllllllllly can't lose.


Hope you get it sorted though mate!

hit it until it works...or you get an excuse to buy a new one

Buy a new hard drive, install Windows on it with the current one disconnected - connect old hard drive access old files. Hope you sort it!

okey tried the dskchk/f thing

wouldnt let me use that command with a /f, so tried dskchk on its own. left it overnight, then this morning it had a message saying something about a few "unrecoverable errors on the volume"...hmm doesn't sound like a good sign

not really bothered about the computer itself working, just could do with the data really

Year it sounds like your gonna have to rebuild, do it on a new drive per prev post & good luck!

isnt there a way to change a hard drive from 1 pc to a new 1?

Year, see post above!

EFA wrote:Year, see post above!

sorry, thought u was goin on bout summat else
my mistake

Nah not at all, I was but in a round about way where you get to keep your old HD and use as a slave by rebuilding a new HD into the PC and as long as it aint fuct you can save all the data - or indeed just take the HD out and put it in another PC as a slave and save all teh data and rebuild the PC as is.

download http://www.knoppix.org/ live cd and burn it
go into bios set cd-dvd drive to top of the boot order
put the knoppix cd in the drive, when u get into this see if the drives appear on the desktop presented, if not quite likely hardware failure

Sorted this out bruv

just about to try this knoppix thingy, see if that does any good

ramadanman wrote:okey tried the dskchk/f thing

wouldnt let me use that command with a /f, so tried dskchk on its own. left it overnight, then this morning it had a message saying something about a few "unrecoverable errors on the volume"...hmm doesn't sound like a good sign

not really bothered about the computer itself working, just could do with the data really

i kind of work in a tech call centre- as far as im aware, that means the hdd is dead.