Laptop hard drive - packed in?

Vic_980

I have a laptop which has suddenly stopped booting up.

A quick look in the BIOS shows that the hard drive is no longer being detected by the computer.

It you reboot the machine over and over again, the hard drive intermittently appears. When it does appear, it attempts to go through the Windows boot process, but only manages to go through a few steps, then grinds to a halt. It takes a very long time to even get this far.

Could this be caused by a faulty connector or is it more likely that the hard drive has failed?

Are there any diagnostic programs available which would show that the drive has packed in?

-TangleFoot-

If you know what model hard drive you have you should be able to find a tailor-made diagnostic utility or two for it on the manufacturer's website.

You'll find utilities for several well-known brands listed here, under the heading "Hard Disk Diagnosis".

boogiemaster

You may have some bad sectors on your hard drive and that may be causing the booting problems.
Normally when you start getting bad sectors the rest of the drive follows.
It cannot scan the drive because of the bad sectors, maybe the bad sector is where xp is kept.