Hard Drive Connected, Everything Shuts Down

I have an emachines T5234 that is usually running pretty long hours. Walked away, came back and it was off. Honestly, I never blew the dust out of it until it quit (which helped the cpu fan run so much quieter!). I tried to run it in safemode, but once the windows loading bar comes on, the indicator starts from the left and then shuts off everything once it gets to the right. Ive tried everything from changing the boot first from cd, and leaving the hard drive offline. The only thing that keeps it on is leaving the hard drive unplugged from the motherboard, but once the hard drive is plugged back in, it will shut down. I hope somebody has some suggestions. Now I only wish I backed up our personal files! Thanks.

 

Hi Nogoodwood,
Welcome to BBS
here are a couple of options:
if you have another hdd plug it in to test if that is the problem, if it works ok you maybe able to access the 2nd (old drive) after you install an operating system & it is connected.
Also you could try setting the drive to cable select and test it that way, if you go with the first option, remember to set the second drive to slave as it should already be set to master?
regards Jac

 

Thanks! I'll try this out and get back as quick as I can!

 

Many thanks! I thought all was lost but it worked as a slave drive and all my files are still accessible. On to the diagnostics!

 

Thanks Pete. All personal files backed up. Now, how should I go about diagnosing the hard drive? Two hard drives with vista operating systems. Will they conflict each other? Repair one through the other? The DVD driVe is sata connected. I only have two places for them on the motherboard. So only the master and slave drives are connected. Suggestions? Thanks!

 

vista wont boot, hard drive prob?

A while back i posted a hard drive that kept shutting down before it finished booting, i slaved the drive to another computer and it workd fine. The vista disc that came with the emachines desktop wont do anything for the problem.
Im using Hiren's Boot CD and there seems to be no problem with the hard drive. After running SuperAntiSpyware there seems to be a system.BrokenFileAssociation
HKCR\.exe
also upon first powering up it states cmain no pxe stack
Dont know what to do next. Any suggestions?

 

ms-dos

okay, vista wont boot from the system disk that came with my emachine, vista wont boot from the hard drive, last time pete said to run an ms-dos diagnostic to run without having to run from within windows, can you recommend which program would be suitable, maybe vistaPE? I dont want to try something that will make things more difficult.

 

Emachines don't have a lot of support information and for Windows 7, I can only see half-a-dozen FAQs.

If their Windows 7 system is anything like Vista, see if you can use these suggestions to get to the recovery environment
http://www.emachines.com/faq/vista/7515418su539.html
Try the Startup Repair and System Restore options. [Edit: The system is Vista, not Windows 7, I became distracted in the links]

 

Advanced Boot Options

The choices are:
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Enable Boot Logging
Enable low-resolution video
Last Known Good Configuration
Directory Services restore Mode
Debugging Mode
Disable automatic restart on system failure
Disable Driver signature enforcement
Start windows normally


Directory Services restore mode starts a list then blanks and completely shuts off. Could this be a short of some kind? MiniXp on the Hiren Cd allows me to browse through the hard drive without cutting off though it occasionally occurs. This CD included with the desktop says re-installation of vista is though i dont know which choice that would be. Nothing on the installation cd will restore anything, it starts to boot then dies. not even system recovery. I press F8 to reach this advanced boot menu, otherwise only boot from cd starts the windows to load then cuts off.


emachines T5234
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4000+ (dual-core)
WD 3200AJSS SATA II (7200rpm, 8MB cache)
1024MB 667MHz DDR2 dual-channel memory (2 × 512MB)

 

Your problem still relates to your original thread
http://www.windowsbbs.com/hardware/93080-hard-drive-connected-everything-shuts-down.html
Please do not start any new threads on the subject.

Did you run the hard disk drive diagnostics?

When you say "cuts off ", the system shuts down, right? It is not freezing or blue-screening?

When you slave the HDD into the other (Vista) computer, run Error Checking (CHKDSK) on the Windows drive. There are instructions in Help and Support.

Check that all the cables are secure in the computer's case. You should disconnect and reseat them.

A shut down would relate to the BIOS or hardware in my experience. I cannot find a download for the User Guide/manual. Start reading through it if you have it. Go into the BIOS (startup configuration settings) and select Defaults (it might be F9).

The options you list appear to be the F8 (Startup Options) menu. The information about the System Restore and Startup Repair are from booting to the DVD.

Since you have backed up your data, you can reinstall Vista
http://www.emachines.com/faq/vista/7515638su4.html
I suggest in Section 11, that you delete the current Vista partition, then create a new partition (and format it) before installing Vista.

You need to confirm that the HDD is healthy. If you cannot boot to the Windows DVD disk with the HDD connected, will it boot with the HDD disconnected? If so, you need to test the HDD with the manufacturer's diagnostics utilities (WD Lifeguard) suggested in the original thread.

Appears to be a false positive in Superantispyware.

From what I can find, this appears to a problem booting to a Linux based CD/DVD disk, nothing to do with Windows. (I wonder if there might be a problem with the CD/DVD drive, try borrowing the CD/DVD drive out of the other computer you mention.)

Matt

 

sorry, still needed help and my original thread was more than thirty days old.

My computer experience is very minimum. Vista is a different beast compared to earlier windows versions. I currently have no access to another computer to slave the drive.
Ive used a boot disk with hard drive tools that show no problems with partitions or sectors. Trying to boot without the Drive connected results in nothing happening.
Ive been able to dive around the hard drive using Mini Xp. I'm going to do exactly as you suggested with partitioning and reloading. Drive D: is recovery, Drive C: is local disk.
Tried setting bios to defaults without any change. gonna try what you said now, thanks

 

Hope it's not too late now, but be careful not to delete the Recovery (D: ) drive. If you are still experiencing problems, we can try booting to that recovery partition.

 

Read this:
http://www.e4allupgraders.info/dir5/troubleshooting/system_recovery.shtml
and see the section about "Recovering you system from the hard drive ".

I have pointed a lot of people to that website over the years
http://www.e4allupgraders.info/
You might find it more helpful than the Emachines website.

 

Havent deleted the recovery, but i did wipe the local disk. still in the process of partitioning it since it took a while to complete the process. (one pass zeros) but now that I have wouldn't it be easier to erase the whole thing? Also the partition is not available as free space to create another partition. Though there is no data to read it remains taken. Do I need to use it as a primary partition or extended?