Very strange hard drive failure problem, stumped totally.

Ok here's the problem. Please excuse the details but I think they are necessary for you to understand all facets of the issue. Thank you in advance for your help!

Here's how it all started. My sister was copying a DVD image to my hard disk drive when suddenly she calls me... "Uhhh nora your computer just gave a blue screen that said something about windows needing to protect your computer from damage ". I told her to just hard reboot the system. When she did that, she told me something was wrong and I needed to come see.

Unfortunately what I saw sucked majorly... system was not booting windows from my HD. ****. System post fine, although it took awhile to detect IDE drives during the boot process, but eventually it did try to boot windows. However, it could only make it to the splash screen before booting windows failed. At which point the system restarts itself and begins the boot process over. On the "failed reboots ", the system never detected the IDE drives and hangs there indefinitely.

At this point I am assuming the problem is likely that my HDD might be dead. But before jumping to that conclusion I do some basic troubleshooting. I switch IDE cables, no luck. I put the drive on the second IDE channel, no luck. I changed the jumper settings from master to cable select, and vice versa, no luck. I tried booting in safe mode, it failed every time it got to the file "mup.sys ". I tried formatting the drive using the windows CD (deleting the partition & formatting). When I did that I got a blue crash screen informing me the computer could not access the drive, at which point the system again restarted itself.
I tried pulling the drive and trying it in 3 other complete working systems, all had the same problem (not booting the drive).

Ok, so now I am pretty sure the HDD has died on me. I'm thinking the problem will prove itself resolved when I put in a working drive.
I got the 3 drives from the other 3 systems. Those drives were:
1) a 30 gig samsung
2) a 60 gig maxtor
3) a 80 gig seagate (an exact replica of the drive that failed).

I was fully expecting all 3 drives to work however they did not. Drive 1 and 2 did not boot windows, however the problem is slightly different than with the broken drive. For drive 1 and 2, everything appears to work fine (drives are detected rapidly, appears to be fine) but when it gets to boot windows, it fails at the splash screen and cycles over. It does this indefinitely, unlike with the broken drive (which fails to detect IDE drives on reboot once the OS fails to load and just hangs frozen). Safe mode did not work, changing jumper settings and reseating the cable did not work.
When I plugged in the 80 gig seagate, it DID boot just fine. I tried switching cables to make sure it wasn't a cable thing that caused the other drives not to boot, and all cables worked with this drive.

So my question is what on earth is wrong with my computer? Why is it only booting from 1 80 gig seagate and not the other 2 drives? The original 80 gig seagate is very likely imbued with a problem or dead, because it will no work in ANY machine. How unlikely is it that my hard drive should "break" at the same time as some other computer part in my machine?
So I've thrown up my hands in despiration here, and am turning to you tech gurus to guide me .
I was about to spend 65 on a new WD 80 gig caviar (a superior drive to the seagate IMO) but I don't want to do that if when I plug the thing in it STILL won't work, you know? So before I do that help me figure out why these 2 drives will not work hehe. Thanks.

Here are my sys specs if you are curious...
MSI K7N2-L mobo
AMD athlon 2400+
Antec PS
512 MB kingston pc 2700 ram
ATI radeon sapphire 9500
2 optical drives (NEC 16x DVDR & an old 8X DVD ROM)
and of course, an 80 gig 7200 RPM seagate baracuda IDE drive that has just crapped out on me.

If you need additional information please let me know.
Thanks!

 

itsthewooo

What version of windows were you running? And what version is on the HDD that worked? And was that out of a computer with the same specs? If not, please give the specs of that computer, including the OS.

You seem to have proved that the mobo is OK, if one other HDD runs on it satisfactorily. It also seems that the first HDD that crashed is dead.

Unlikely. What other part seems to be broken?

Don't know, but difference in hardware or lack of appropriate hardware drivers on those systems could be the reason.

If you need to do that (do it with just one) reinstall windows on it while it's connected to the problem computer, and then the CD with the drivers that came with the mobo and video. If that succeeds, you KNOW the mobo is OK.

 

Hi,

It is not good to take a HDD with Windows fully installed from one computer and run it as the boot drive in another. All the drivers are loaded from the original system and that is why the second HDD probably will not operate. It may be very lucky that the third does work. When you put them back into their original machines, you may find the drivers have become corrupted and need to be reinstalled. If they are Win XP systems you may lose a "reactivation ".
If you want to test the HDD of a machine, put into another computer jumpered as slave (or secondary master) and test it that way.

I think the original HDD is still OK because it will partially boot (read files from the drive). If the drive was dead, you would not get past POST, it would stop or give an error message that there was no operating system.

The partition information of the drive could be corrupted. Check it with the Seagate utilities Seatools and DiskWizard. Get DiskWizard to repartition it (as well as reformat). If Seatools reports that there are bad sectors, put it in another computer as slave and get Windows to run Scandisk on it with "Automatically fix errors ".

Check in the BIOS/CMOS settings that the drive has been identified correctly (the right size, cylinders, heads, etc) as reported by DiskWizard. You may need to run "Autodetect harddrive" if your BIOS settings have it.

Also check that the connections are fully seated (power and ribbon cable, also the ribbon cable where it connects to the motherboard).

Matt

 

itsthewooo

mattman is absolutely correct. Always test a suspect HDD as a slave; don't try to boot it. However, whats done is done and I'm trying to suggest a way foreward from here. True, the old disk may be salvageable, and a try should be made to get it working again.

The most important item seems to be verifying that the mobo is OK. Then next try the old disk to see if a BIOS can identify it, and if so, partition it and format it and reinstall an OS on it. We probably will never know what went wrong in the first place; that's not unusual. Nowadays one always suspects a trojan attack.

Incidentally, flashing the BIOS might be a good idea to make sure it's not the culprit, but don't think that should be done by an amateur.

 

A lesson that I learned the hard way also. I wound up with a full format and start over.

But, I have taken an HD from one machine that was running 98SE. Plugged it into another machine but I did not allow it to boot to the HD the first time.

I booted to the Floppy and reinstall 98SE. Never a problem.

I also copied a 40gig HD with 98SE to an 80gig and put it in this machine. Booted to the floppy and reinstalled 98SE. It now has xp Pro on it.

BillyBob