PC Not booting up

valencia_2

I recommend taking the hard drive out and putting it into another pc as a slave drive. Boot up and see if the drive appears. Depending on the damage to the drive you might get the drive to mount and be able to rescue your files. Sounds like a corrupt hard drive that needs reformatting to me although I've experienced this before and I couldn't save neither the drive nor the data.

jackthenipper

You dont have a floppy in the drive when you are trying to reboot?

fifeken

It gets worse!

Tried booting from CD and using fdisk /mbr. This has killed everything and now I can't boot from CD either.
Tried removing drive and connecting it to another PC as a slave but no luck as the drive doesn't appear.
There is no floppy in when I try to reboot.

Is it time to throw it in the skip or is there anything else worth trying?

fifeken

loaner wrote: »

is it spinning

fdisk /mbr has nothing to do with the CD booting or not

if you are connecting it as a slave, make sure that the cable select/master/slave is set correctly, and the slave is enabled in the bios.

Yes, it's spinning.
The fdisk /mbr was to try and fix the original fault - I don't know why it won't boot from CD now unless something has gone really t**s up!

I used the slave jumper but never checked in the BIOS - something to try in the morning.

Thanks.

Exo

Usually the operating system will not boot because the master boot record (MBR) or operating system is corrupt or the hard disk has failed.
As the attempt MBR fix appears to have failed, then I suggest running a hard disc diagnostic in order to establish what state the hard drive is in.

Whether or not the MBR is corrupt or the hard disc is dead, the computer should still be able to boot from a bootable disc in the CD/DVD drive, providing that option has been set in the BIOS.

I assume you still get a P.O.S.T. display when attempting to boot?

fifeken

Hi Exo - I couldn't understand why it wasn't booting from CD now either. I've not been back at it over the weekend but I'll keep this thread updated if I get anywhere.

culpepper

You could check that the ide cable is properly seated. If you have two cables, try using the other one with your boot drive and the cd drive you want to boot from.
If the other ide socket is empty, try changing the ide cable to that connector without changing any jumpers.
If the IDE is the problem you have the option to try,same connector,different cable, same cable ,different connector, just reseating the end of the cable at both ends.
My old pc has ide problems (i think the motherboard has a loose connector socket) sometimes it will just seem sluggish and then wont boot till i reseat the cable, sometimes it will not read the optical drive till i do etc..I just leave the cover unscrewed now and it is nearly always just a question of pressing on the ide connector and it is back working again.