Very strange hard drive failure problem, stumped totally.

[withthelightsou]

Ok here's the problem. Please excuse the details but I think they are necessary for you to understand all facets of the issue. Thank you in advance for your help!

Here's how it all started. My sister was copying a DVD image to my hard disk drive when suddenly she calls me... "Uhhh nora your computer just gave a blue screen that said something about windows needing to protect your computer from damage". I told her to just hard reboot the system. When she did that, she told me something was wrong and I needed to come see.

Unfortunately what I saw sucked majorly... system was not booting windows from my HD. Crap. System post fine, although it took awhile to detect IDE drives during the boot process, but eventually it did try to boot windows. However, it could only make it to the splash screen before booting windows failed. At which point the system restarts itself and begins the boot process over. On the "failed reboots", the system never detected the IDE drives and hangs there indefinitely.

At this point I am assuming the problem is likely that my HDD might be dead. But before jumping to that conclusion I do some basic troubleshooting. I switch IDE cables, no luck. I put the drive on the second IDE channel, no luck. I changed the jumper settings from master to cable select, and vice versa, no luck. I tried booting in safe mode, it failed every time it got to the file "mup.sys". I tried formatting the drive using the windows CD (deleting the partition & formatting). When I did that I got a blue crash screen informing me the computer could not access the drive, at which point the system again restarted itself.
I tried pulling the drive and trying it in 3 other complete working systems, all had the same problem (not booting the drive).

Ok, so now I am pretty sure the HDD has died on me. I'm thinking the problem will prove itself resolved when I put in a working drive.
I got the 3 drives from the other 3 systems. Those drives were:
1) a 30 gig samsung
2) a 60 gig maxtor
3) a 80 gig seagate (an exact replica of the drive that failed).

I was fully expecting all 3 drives to work however they did not. Drive 1 and 2 did not boot windows, however the problem is slightly different than with the broken drive. For drive 1 and 2, everything appears to work fine (drives are detected rapidly, appears to be fine) but when it gets to boot windows, it fails at the splash screen and cycles over. It does this indefinitely, unlike with the broken drive (which fails to detect IDE drives on reboot once the OS fails to load and just hangs frozen). Safe mode did not work, changing jumper settings and reseating the cable did not work.
When I plugged in the 80 gig seagate, it DID boot just fine. I tried switching cables to make sure it wasn't a cable thing that caused the other drives not to boot, and all cables worked with this drive.

So my question is what on earth is wrong with my computer? Why is it only booting from 1 80 gig seagate and not the other 2 drives? The original 80 gig seagate is very likely imbued with a problem or dead, because it will no work in ANY machine. How unlikely is it that my hard drive should "break" at the same time as some other computer part in my machine?
So I've thrown up my hands in despiration here, and am turning to you tech gurus to guide me .
I was about to spend 65 on a new WD 80 gig caviar (a superior drive to the seagate IMO) but I don't want to do that if when I plug the thing in it STILL won't work, you know? So before I do that help me figure out why these 2 drives will not work hehe. Thanks.

Here are my sys specs if you are curious...
MSI K7N2-L mobo
AMD athlon 2400+
Antec PS
512 MB kingston pc 2700 ram
ATI radeon sapphire 9500
2 optical drives (NEC 16x DVDR & an old 8X DVD ROM)
and of course, an 80 gig 7200 RPM seagate baracuda IDE drive that has just crapped out on me.

If you need additional information please let me know.
Thanks!

[JANINE]

Ok here's the problem. Please excuse the details but I think they are necessary for you to understand all facets of the issue. Thank you in advance for your help!

Here's how it all started. My sister was copying a DVD image to my hard disk drive when suddenly she calls me... "Uhhh nora your computer just gave a blue screen that said something about windows needing to protect your computer from damage". I told her to just hard reboot the system. When she did that, she told me something was wrong and I needed to come see.

Unfortunately what I saw sucked majorly... system was not booting windows from my HD. Crap. System post fine, although it took awhile to detect IDE drives during the boot process, but eventually it did try to boot windows. However, it could only make it to the splash screen before booting windows failed. At which point the system restarts itself and begins the boot process over. On the "failed reboots", the system never detected the IDE drives and hangs there indefinitely.

At this point I am assuming the problem is likely that my HDD might be dead. But before jumping to that conclusion I do some basic troubleshooting. I switch IDE cables, no luck. I put the drive on the second IDE channel, no luck. I changed the jumper settings from master to cable select, and vice versa, no luck. I tried booting in safe mode, it failed every time it got to the file "mup.sys". I tried formatting the drive using the windows CD (deleting the partition & formatting). When I did that I got a blue crash screen informing me the computer could not access the drive, at which point the system again restarted itself.
I tried pulling the drive and trying it in 3 other complete working systems, all had the same problem (not booting the drive).

Ok, so now I am pretty sure the HDD has died on me. I'm thinking the problem will prove itself resolved when I put in a working drive.
I got the 3 drives from the other 3 systems. Those drives were:
1) a 30 gig samsung
2) a 60 gig maxtor
3) a 80 gig seagate (an exact replica of the drive that failed).

I was fully expecting all 3 drives to work however they did not. Drive 1 and 2 did not boot windows, however the problem is slightly different than with the broken drive. For drive 1 and 2, everything appears to work fine (drives are detected rapidly, appears to be fine) but when it gets to boot windows, it fails at the splash screen and cycles over. It does this indefinitely, unlike with the broken drive (which fails to detect IDE drives on reboot once the OS fails to load and just hangs frozen). Safe mode did not work, changing jumper settings and reseating the cable did not work.
When I plugged in the 80 gig seagate, it DID boot just fine. I tried switching cables to make sure it wasn't a cable thing that caused the other drives not to boot, and all cables worked with this drive.

So my question is what on earth is wrong with my computer? Why is it only booting from 1 80 gig seagate and not the other 2 drives? The original 80 gig seagate is very likely imbued with a problem or dead, because it will no work in ANY machine. How unlikely is it that my hard drive should "break" at the same time as some other computer part in my machine?
So I've thrown up my hands in despiration here, and am turning to you tech gurus to guide me .
I was about to spend 65 on a new WD 80 gig caviar (a superior drive to the seagate IMO) but I don't want to do that if when I plug the thing in it STILL won't work, you know? So before I do that help me figure out why these 2 drives will not work hehe. Thanks.

Here are my sys specs if you are curious...
MSI K7N2-L mobo
AMD athlon 2400+
Antec PS
512 MB kingston pc 2700 ram
ATI radeon sapphire 9500
2 optical drives (NEC 16x DVDR & an old 8X DVD ROM)
and of course, an 80 gig 7200 RPM seagate baracuda IDE drive that has just crapped out on me.

If you need additional information please let me know.
Thanks!

Alright. it sound like your hard drive has severely failed here hence the blue screen error. can you remember exactly what the error was and can you re-enact it in anyway? this could be a case of a severely corrupted o/s in which case the o/s would need reinstalling. somehow i doubt this would work in this case though. the exact blue screen error would help to shoot the problem here.

the non recognition in the bios of the othere drives means that you have not set the jumper on the mobo to overwrite the bios. hence the reason why its only seeing an identical drive here.

hope this helps:)

[withthelightsou]

Alright. it sound like your hard drive has severely failed here hence the blue screen error. can you remember exactly what the error was and can you re-enact it in anyway? this could be a case of a severely corrupted o/s in which case the o/s would need reinstalling. somehow i doubt this would work in this case though. the exact blue screen error would help to shoot the problem here.

the non recognition in the bios of the othere drives means that you have not set the jumper on the mobo to overwrite the bios. hence the reason why its only seeing an identical drive here.

hope this helps:)

I wasn't htere for the error, unfortunately. I was told it was a blue screen that said something about windows being shut down to protect the computer.

I doubt it is a software issue as I saidi n my post i tried to reformat the HD and put back on a new OS with no success. I was given an error about how the computer could not read the drive.

RE:the other drives... they ARE recognized, and listed appropriately in bios. However I cannot boot windows from these other drives,only the identical drive. I did short the CMOS by setting the jumper but that didn't help things any, unfortunately.

[JANINE]

I wasn't htere for the error, unfortunately. I was told it was a blue screen that said something about windows being shut down to protect the computer.

I doubt it is a software issue as I saidi n my post i tried to reformat the HD and put back on a new OS with no success. I was given an error about how the computer could not read the drive.

RE:the other drives... they ARE recognized, and listed appropriately in bios. However I cannot boot windows from these other drives,only the identical drive. I did short the CMOS by setting the jumper but that didn't help things any, unfortunately.

sounds like u need a new hard disk.:cool:

[Catweazle]

Okay, simple answer only needed!

Point one. your hard drive has died. Replace it.

Point two: If you take a Windows XP installed hard drive from one computer, and bung it in another computer, it almost certainly won't boot to Windows. The copyright protection of Windows Product Activation will stop it from doing so. It will usually either keep rebooting or crash with an error message.

Point three: As you've noticed, the only drive you were able to successfully swap in was a replica of your original installation. At least I assume that it was a 'ghosted' drive image from your use of the word 'replica' If it actually was an identical drive which had been installed with Windows in a different computer, then you were very very lucky to have it boot up!

Go buy another drive and stop worrying about things that didn't happen when they weren't supposed to anyway!

:D

[DeLorean]

Hellooow,

I think your problem is not your harddrive, but your power supply.
If harddrives are slow recognized during Post-screen its curtain a powersupply problem.

Check your cables from supply to harddrive, and use the connection at shortest to the supply to hook up your drive, and if you are use flashy casefans etc... connect these at the connector as far as you can on your powercable.
If an harddrive receives not enough power, than your they will we slow recognized and even your pc can fall in a cycle off restarting.

My apology for the writemistakes, but i'am from Belgium ;)

Greetz

[JANINE]

i have purchased a samsung hard drive recently for a PC of which i am building. My problem is that my hard drive wont fit in the bay designated for that purpose. its nothing to do with where the 2 fans at the front are located as theres plenty of depth between them and the hard drive bays.

can anyone tell me why on earth what appears to be a standard hard drive will not fit into what appears to be a standard bay? any clues would be greatly appreciated as im stumped.:) :!:

[JANINE]

i have purchased a samsung hard drive recently for a PC of which i am building. My problem is that my hard drive wont fit in the bay designated for that purpose. its nothing to do with where the 2 fans at the front are located as theres plenty of depth between them and the hard drive bays.

can anyone tell me why on earth what appears to be a standard hard drive will not fit into what appears to be a standard bay? any clues would be greatly appreciated as im stumped.:) :!:

i have figured it out for myself... believe it or not it was a screw on the top of the drive that was catching on the lip inside the bay. i just took the drive back and exchanged it for another 1 that does fit.:D

[alc6379]

i have figured it out for myself... believe it or not it was a screw on the top of the drive that was catching on the lip inside the bay. i just took the drive back and exchanged it for another 1 that does fit.:D

Great! But... next time, try not to hijack someone else's thread with your unrelated question. :)

[JANINE]

Great! But... next time, try not to hijack someone else's thread with your unrelated question. :)

hehehehehehe... that'll teach me to be a little more careful:lol:

[djrivera1]

99% Chance power supply failing (DON'T BUY NEW HARDDRIVE STILL GOOD CHECKED ON ANOTHER COMPUTER BEFORE REPLACING IT) blue screen of death usally ram related which idicated bad powersupply low voltage which why system freeze or you get hardware halted checked voltage if 12v rail drop replaced cheap power cause problem buy good one.

[big frog]

Alright. it sound like your hard drive has severely failed here hence the blue screen error. can you remember exactly what the error was and can you re-enact it in anyway? this could be a case of a severely corrupted o/s in which case the o/s would need reinstalling. somehow i doubt this would work in this case though. the exact blue screen error would help to shoot the problem here.

the non recognition in the bios of the othere drives means that you have not set the jumper on the mobo to overwrite the bios. hence the reason why its only seeing an identical drive here.

hope this helps:)

I have a similar problem: c: drive died, switched drives around, messed w/ setup settings, bought new HD, installed it and original D: drive, ran cd installer, booted, raid bios correctly found both drives including serial #, tried to install windows, failed because no HDDs were found, rebooted (again both drives correctly id'd), hit F2 to go to setup, found that drive configuration for both drives showed "unknown" device, but boot sequence showed model number correctly for both. Can you tell me more about overwriting the bios as that sounds like it may be my problem. thanks

[dcc]

Did you format and partition the hdd?

[big frog]

Did you format and partition the hdd?

yes