PC start up problem

sumeet

Unable since yesterday to get PC to work.

After Dell intro screen, comes up with a blank screen and says something along the lines of invalid boot diskette, insert boot disk in drive A. Nothing presently in drive A.

Tried F2 command to get onto Boot setup and switch to hard drive but says hard drive not present.

Anyone help on what I need to step by step please, need to access PC desparetly, hoping its not died on me. I'm on Windows ME.

Similar thing happended around a year back but seemed to be ok when I next switched on but it's still not working today.

MercilessKiller

sounds like your hard drive has died on you!

You can doubly make sure by sticking in your official windows cd and seeing if that detects your hard drive or says "No hard drive detected". If the latter your screwed, if the first, then its a very strange problem.

Hopefully you backed up?

sumeet

Have tried the reinstall Windows CD and it did say no Hard Drive detected.

Do I basically need a new PC or can this one be fixed and can any old hard drive info be accessed?

MercilessKiller

Well you dont need a new PC. You need a new hard drive. If you buy one, and stick it in where the current one is (make sure you set the jumpers to master if its IDE), then hook the broken one up as a slave drive (make sure jumpers are changed again).. then when you installw indows see if you can see the other drive...

If not ya screwed

albertross_2

has it been moved recently? Take the cover off, and check the leads into the hard disk are secure

If it is ME, it's probably a bit long in the tooth anyway, so may be time for a new one. The good news is they are really cheap nowadays

dataclinic

Any unusual noises coming from the drive? or any noises at all e.g. is the drive spinning up?

BeerBelly

Take cover off and check IDE and power cables to hard drive.

Also, slim shot, but might be worth booting i to Bios (press F2 or F12 on Dells I believe).

Then go and check the start up options - make sure HDD0 is there somehwere - have it as first or 2nd in the order (CD being first). If HDD is not specified anywhere in the oder you will also get the message you are seeing.

Failure all that its a dead/defunct drive Im afraid.

dataclinic

One word of caution though, be careful how many times you are powering up the computer, should you require data recovery if you have lost data you could be causing more damage to a potentially already damaged drive...

sumeet

Thanks for helpful tips:T

Was going to try these last night but before I could my wife went on PC and amazining it worked.

However to be cautious I think I will back up key files and probably around time I bought a new PC as current is 7 years old now and still runs on windows ME.