Hard Drive Problems - help needed please!

albertross_2

Does it boot in safe mode (F8) at startup?

What is the last thing that comes up on screen that you can read?

Do you get any beeps?

you could try reseating the ram

http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=dimm

annie-c

Will go and try again....

annie-c

OK

When I turn it on the Packard Bell screen comes on and options (if I get in quick) are to press tab or F4.

When I press F8 it doesn't respond.


It goes quickly to the next screen where a few lines says 'auto searching for...[various things]'

Then it says

Boot failure
Boot from floppy

Then it says something like

Insert CD to boot from....

And that's as far as it gets.

When I put the CD in to start it takes me to the CD menu screen and when I ask it to boot from CD it does all the stuff I said earlier. The last thing it says is about memory problem and then it switches off and the cyle starts again.

Yes it beeps in the usual starting up beepy way. And it makes a noise like it has asthma (sorry that's a silly way to describe it, but it sounds wheezy as though it is trying to read a disk and can't?)

albertross_2

Have you been able to access or see the hard disk in any diagnostics you have done sofar?

You need to find out if your HD is being seen by the bios, by hitting F4 or tab?

annie-c

Ooh, I did that earlier and no, I don't think it is being seen

albertross_2

what is the exact model of the pc?

Go into the bios screen for the hard disks and Cdrom and describe what you see.

annie-c

Packard Bell Club 66 (very old, bought 1999)

When I press F2 it goes into a screen called AMIBIOS . It is the main screen of the BIOS and it has a list of information anout memory, floppy disk etc etc. The date it has recorded is 1998, so it looks like th clock has reset iotself to when it was first assembled.

I scrolled down to something called IDE MAster (which I assumed was the hard drive, since the next down the list was IDE Slave). I pressed return and it searched and then said IDE Not installed. I'm guessing that means it just isn't reading the hard drive?


Thanks for all your help with this...

GreenNotM

Not sure you mentioned the beeping before - but could you try reseating the memory and the HD ribbon cable onto the motherboard end?

may look like 1 inch high strips of plastic with white clips at each end. With the pc powered off etc - press both white clips down and away from the chips.

lift the memory out then push it back in to the slot ( do not rotate/turn the chips ) You will hear the clips "click" as the memory is seated correctly - try this even tho they look okay

Pull the ribbon cable straight up and push str8 back down to avoid bending the pins.

Good luck

annie-c

Really sorry to keep asking silly questions but what does the memory look like?

And what is the significance of the beeping?

Thanks!

albertross_2

After checking the cable again, could you go into the bios,

Are there any other options on that menu screen, to set it to auto for example, to autodetect the hard disk. Can it see the CD drive on one of the other channels, if so, which one?