Is my hard drive dead ??

lovebargains

Hi experts! Hubbies laptop has been a bit odd for a couple of days. Last night I think it breathed its last! Dreaded blue error page, error messages include 'kernel data inout error' 'stop 0x00000007A' it then did a physical memory dump. Now wont start up, just get the toshiba logo, then ' insert system disc in drive. press any key when ready'. Cant start it in safe mode, the only thing i can get into is system set up, changed boot up to floppy, then tried a windows 98 start up floppy, and a xp start up one. Nothing! There is a lot of noise tho! think its the hard drive, cranking! Reminds me of when the laser went on the dvd player, just get a skipping and grinding noise. I think its died, fortunately hubby just surfs on it, and keep his photos on it which I transfer to desktop pc, but there are a few that we havent backed up, would be nice to have them, but not important!
He has such faith in me, he thinks he will come home and it will be up and running, but he may find me digging a hole in garden for it
Anyone agree with me, its time to get a new hard drive?

culpepper

does sound like it doesnt it?
Have you got a boot cd you could try just to see its not the actual laptop?

lovebargains

culpepper wrote:

does sound like it doesnt it?
Have you got a boot cd you could try just to see its not the actual laptop?

Tried a boot up floppy, no joy,

lipidicman

lovebargains wrote:

Tried a boot up floppy, no joy,

See, thats a problem. A dead hard drive shouldnt cause a boot floppy to fail.

A puzzle

onzey

Not quite the same "Kernel" message But the same "Stop" message discussed here

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prmd_stp_fvlq.asp

If it's relevant looks like there are a number of possible causes

foot_loose

lovebargains wrote:

Hi experts! Hubbies laptop has been a bit odd for a couple of days. Last night I think it breathed its last! Dreaded blue error page, error messages include 'kernel data inout error' 'stop 0x00000007A' it then did a physical memory dump. Now wont start up, just get the toshiba logo, then ' insert system disc in drive. press any key when ready'. Cant start it in safe mode, the only thing i can get into is system set up, changed boot up to floppy, then tried a windows 98 start up floppy, and a xp start up one. Nothing! There is a lot of noise tho! think its the hard drive, cranking! Reminds me of when the laser went on the dvd player, just get a skipping and grinding noise. I think its died, fortunately hubby just surfs on it, and keep his photos on it which I transfer to desktop pc, but there are a few that we havent backed up, would be nice to have them, but not important!
He has such faith in me, he thinks he will come home and it will be up and running, but he may find me digging a hole in garden for it
Anyone agree with me, its time to get a new hard drive?

change bios settings to boot from cd first then put in xp disk and reinstall. when you reinstall leave current format unchanged. when xp reinstalls your filles will still be there. give it a try

T4i

hmmmm.

Dodgy, the floppy shouldnt fail. Could be lots of things

Dying PSU, loose wiring.

When you say its been odd what do you mean?

Joe_Bloggs

When you say "no joy" , do you mean that the first boot option in the bios was set to be the floppy and it subsequently failed ?
The default status of a computer system should be to fail to boot on floppy, cdrom, network, other device, etc without authorised intervention. Any changes should require bios password access to the boot options .

J_B.

lovebargains

Joe_Bloggs wrote:

When you say "no joy" , do you mean that the first boot option in the bios was set to be the floppy and it subsequently failed ?
The default status of a computer system should be to fail to boot on floppy, cdrom, network, other device, etc without authorised intervention. Any changes should require bios password access to the boot options .

J_B.

I changed it to boot from floppy when it wouldnt do anything, and it still did nothing!. Swapped it back to boot from hd, still nothing.
It was behaving oddly by crawling at a snails pace, taking forever to do the smallest task, then it hung on the windows xp on start up, then it wouldnt start up at all.Of course I google hunted for all the error messages, but lots of options there too!

T4i

CPU, RAM, PSU, HDD....Northbridge/Southbridge....take your pick.

Laptops are so hard to work on too

criminal_smile

Lifted from the MS resource site:- 'If the first and third parameters are zero, the stack signature in the kernel stack is missing, an error typically caused by defective hardware'.
As you have zero as the first and third, looks like it is deffo a hardware failure, but doesn't specify which. The resource site advises that you check for defective, malfunctioning, or failed memory hardware, such as memory modules, Level 2 (L2) SRAM cache, or video adapter RAM. If you added new hardware recently, remove and replace it to determine if it is causing or contributing to the problem. Run diagnostics software supplied by the system manufacturer to determine if the component has failed.