BIG Hard Disk & boot problem

1

It’s kind of a long story… lotsa “boots” too… any help and/or suggestions welcome… Thanks for reading.

Starts when I’m not home, comp’ hangs on my wife, she turns off power.
I get back, switch on, use,can’t switch off anymore!? Pull plug.

Next boot, C: drive not found, no boot! Panic!
Using old Win2k as Master/C and non-booting XP as slave, boot gets me dual boot options, try XP/D drive, works but as if XP was just installed.
Save all data to CD-R, try to boot to Win2K/C : no drive found, not booting!

Switch drives to format XP (now back on C): it boots!!! Same to previous state with wallpaper, all softs & updates etc!! What the heck? Ok, use it then… for a few days. Decide to take out Win2k/D to put back big data drive.

No boot anymore, no drive installed it says !? I strike F1 as suggested: it boots! Use a few days by itself, on every boot, Dell welcome progress bar goes to 100%, then nothing happens for a minute! (really, looong time), then black screen saying to use F1, doing this boots as normal (in the meantime, C: got formated and XP reinstalled & updated so NO, no virus involved).

Today, try to set jumper on C: to Master instead of cable select, put big data drive in again as CS too, boot: all ok, it boots as normal!
Happy.
Leave room, come back 1/2 an hour later: comp’ has rebooted and waits for F1 key!!
But now, F1 does not work anymore!!
Reboot, boots showing both drives and partitions, try to access folder on data drive, ok, subfolder… click/tiny beep sounds (like drive access problems), then system locks.
Then blue screen “kernel_data_inpage_error” and some other stuff I don’t have time to read before it reboots.

Power off, take off data/D drive, reboot, F1 works and here I am:

[CENTER]**[SIZE=4]HEEEEELP [/SIZE] ** [SIZE=1]please[/SIZE]… :([/CENTER]

Powe

2

eyezberg, I highly doubt it has anything to do with windows. It sounds like you might have some bad sectors in your master boot record. That, or the hard drive controller is malfunctioning. I’ve seen both. If you’ve got access to another system, I’d say unhook the drives, stick them on another system and run a defrag (or in 98 scandisk and defrag) and play with some files on the drive for a bit. Restart it, and make sure it will load it. If it’s not taking, its definitly your hard drive. If the drives work fine, it’s going to be the motherboard. Because you reinstalled your OS, it’s definitly not a driver issue. Flash your bios to make sure everything is up to date aswell. I’ll search around more for some specific info on “kernel_data_inpage_error”'s. Good Luck!

edit: 600 posts! :smiley:

3

Thanks for your input, congrat on the posts :slight_smile:
Thing is, I do not understand how this could happen “all by itself”,
only thing I can think of to possibly have caused this is pulling the plug
on it without powering off first, what kind off damage can this do, if any?
Any hardware freaks in the house…?
:wink:

4

I’ve read up a bit, and it seems that a lot of Dell users have the exact same problem you’ve been having. Try cleaning your memory, and making sure the contacts are good, and also try cycling your IDE cables between hard drives. Dump your NVRAM (http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1035227) each time, and see what happens.

It appears that most of the people who got it to work again upgraded to 512 megs of ram from 128, as well as replaced their hard drive. Sounds like a bad situation to me.

5

Thanks, I’ll try that. Free fla if it works :slight_smile:

upgraded to 512 megs of ram from 128, as well as replaced their hard drive

i moved from 256 to 512 + HD… hope… :wink:

edit: rebooting now…

edit 2: as per the support page’s instructions,
hit F2 at boot, nothing, then I get both “keyboard failure” AND “no drive”, lol

rebooted again, waited fro F1 or 2 prompt, did as per instructions,
beeped as supposed, hit ESC, reboots and boots: here I am!

now trying to reboot once more. c ya

edit 3: no boot. F2 again, all the steps again, then boots.
will check tomorrow, off to bed.
thx, mate!

6

boot up the computer, and enter the BIOS setup

make sure the following are on:
CAPS LOCK
SCROLL LOCK
NUM LOCK

when all those lights are lit up on your keyboard do the following

press and hold ALT then while holding press F
release all keys

then

press and hold ALT then while holding press E
release all keys

then

press and hold ALT then while holding press B
release all keys

you computer should reboot.

let me know if this fixes it - or if it continutes to happen.

7

Is that a bios restart thing prstudio? Neat.

8

yes it resets the BIOS back to default and has it rescan the IDE devices as if it never had been done before…

9

still does it… off to work

10

will post in the morning sometime - bed time here.

11

ok do you have access to the recovery console?
as in can you get to safe mode boot options at all?

12

This is going to boil down to a faulty HD Controller/mobo or a faulty hard drive. Check the capacitors on your motherboard to make sure none are bulging or leaking. I’ve seen intermittent behaviour like this before involving capacitors.

13

eh not necessarily, bad case scenario its the hard drive - however if he can get the recovery console up we can edit the master boot record :slight_smile:

14

Ok, here goes: I tried again as per your step by step, prstudio, and that worked. Dell site was missing the Alt+F & Alt+B steps!!!
So everything was ok, I insert the data drive and boot, looks ok, both partitions there, try to access one of the folders… everything locks!!
Power off, reboot, re-RAM thingy above, boot: it tells me the most important partition (fla etc data…!) is not formated, do I want to? Of course I don’t, idiot! So it’s showing the other partition, mp3 & movies, looks ok… then it starts ticking, blue screen, reboot… steps as per above as no more drives found, nothing, power off, take out data drive, empty RAM thing again, works!

End of story: 80giga data drive must be “kaputt”?! Any suggestions about recovery? N00b style please :wink:

So far, thanks to all of you, you’ve been a GREAT help, bow & shake hands!!

15

Ok here’s what needs to happen -

This link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=314058

Will explain in detail what I’m about to tell you.

Take your windows installation cd place it in the CD drive.
Start up your system and go into BIOS and change the boot order so that the CD rom drive is FIRST.

save changes and exit the BIOS setup

Windows setup will launch.
when it comes up and asks you what you want to do,
press “r” for repair…

when it comes up it will ask you which one you want to log onto - go with the one that says “windows” in its name…usually the only option…

sometimes it won’t ask you to login - be careful and enter the password correct…it will be the “administrator” password.

it should then bring you to a command style prompt…at this prompt i want you to type the following:

“fixmbr”

then press enter, then type this

“fixboot”

then type “exit”

when the computer reboots, go back into BIOS and change the boot order so that your main hard drive is first…

remove the windows install cd…

then save changes and exit the BIOS screen

and report back with what happens…

16

I need to have both drives installed for that, I guess?
if(answer==yes){
function tryAndHopeToRecoverData(){
BIOS.doAsPrSaid = true;
reboot;
rejoice;
hope;
lol;
thx;
}else{…dunno…}

oh, and: not using a password, i just hit ENTER, right?

hhow’d you know this kinda stuff…?

17

it would be good if both hard drives were connected yes…
no password? enter should work.

the first time i sat at a computer, my feet couldnt touch the ground :slight_smile:
first public troubleshoot call success i was in second grade hehe
took my first computer apart when i was around age 8

let me know how things are going - if all is well the above will work - if not we should be able to at least get the data back.

18

just so you know here in a few minutes I’m leaving work and won’t be able to post on here until later tonight around 8-9ish EST.

19

Well, I went to bed after last post, now I’m off to work :slight_smile:
And going out tonite, so I guess it’ll be saturday before I can try
thx again

20

ok no prob - just let me know :slight_smile: