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#41
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Might not be my Hard drive
I just tried booting it up with both CD/DVD drives completely disconnected (all cables), and there was no change. It still went just as far in the boot-up sequence, and then crashed to the same screen as before. Have you confirmed that the CD you're using is in fact bootable? (I know it seems silly, but I've been caught out on that one before). Dale |
#42
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- Ping techy folks - Is my HD dead??
The correct answer to nearly every technical question is "It
depends," Just wanted to comment on this a little more in the light of recent conversations. Of course "It depends". With every interconnected system, be it mechanical, electrical, or biological, any problem can manifest itself in anyone of about a million ways. *But* there are typical ways different problems will show up. Its far more useful to the person with the problem to address the *typical* issues first, and then move on to the more unusual manifestations. Bad hard drive - Typical manifestation - gradual loss of function, increase in access time over time, generally associated with a 'clicking' noise. Catastrophic failure typically manifests with the hard drive simply no longer being recognized Bad RAM - Typical manifestation - Random lockups, even with a clean OS load. Often frequent lockups even loading the OS. Bad CPU - No life Bad Fan - Bad fan will cause overheating (and change in noise). Typically the system will run for a while, and then shut down. Immediate attempts to reboot will cause the system to lock up again very quickly. Waiting for the system to cool will cause the system to function properly for a while again. Bad/insufficient Power supply - I've mostly seen these manifest as simple 'freezes'. Nothing on the screen changes, it just stops responding. Missing RAM - No life. There are (of course) exceptions to any of the above, and anyone who wants to look smart can of course point them out, but a very high percentage of time, this will be how these problems show up in practice. My experience with IT people is a lot of them will take the approach that people complain about vets taking. They will test randomly until they find something that doesn't work. They don't use any kind of reasoning behind what they do, but they can justify any test they want to do because 'it sometimes shows up like this'. Quite frankly, that's a useless approach, and any idiot can learn to do it in very short order (you just have to be able to 'talk the talk'). Dale |
#43
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Is my HD dead??
More updates
I removed and re-seated the RAM, that had no effect. I removed both of the optical drives, tried it with none, one and both installed, no effect. It turns out to be not as simple as I originally thought, but I am getting a lot closer to tracking down what is going on. I have two harddrives, a 40 GB HD and a 120 GB HD. For whatever reason, my Windows installation is on my 120 GB HD, and not on my 40 GB HD like I previously thought. (BOO me!!) If I set it to start with only the 120 GB HD connected, I get the following at startup: Pri Master:WDC W1200JB-00EVA0 15.05R15 Ultra DMA Mode-5, S.M.A.R.T. Capable and Status BAD And then info on my optical drives. A bit farther down, it says: Pri Master Hard Disk :S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD, backup and replace Press F1 to Continue If I carry on, it loads the Windows installation program (Extremely slow), and I am given the choice to install/repair/quit. Choosing install ends up with the software finding a previous version of windows on my HD (the one that was running before) and it now giving me the option to repair it. I select yes, and it is now in the process of installing/repairing my version of windows. I will give an update of what happens after it is done installing, and I re-connect back up my older 40 GB HD. In any case, I think that it is time for me to replace my 120GB HD, which is weird, as it is only 5 years old. My 40 GB HD is about twice that. -- Marcel and Moogli |
#44
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Is my HD dead??
Marcel Beaudoin wrote
in rec.pets.dogs.behavior: Update I will give an update of what happens after it is done installing, and I re-connect back up my older 40 GB HD. There is definitely a problem with the HD. It never actually finishes the installation, and regularly crashes during the process. So I will remove it from the boot-up list and find someplace that can, when I purchase a new HD, transfer the data to it. Any recommendations?? Also, what I wouldn't mind doing is set up my new HD to be able to boot into Windows, and another partition to boot into a flavour of Linux. Any recommendations for that?? Thanks for all the help folks!! -- Marcel and Moogli |
#45
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Might not be my Hard drive
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#46
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Might not be my Hard drive
In article ,
Rocky wrote: Whatever happened to generic computers? I used to be able to swap HDs between all sorts of PCs. Was is a Dell thing I ran into? I guess Apple's proved you don't need to have open hardware to be successful. Vanilla hardware is important to me because I run lots of Unix (*BSD) at home, some of the funkier chipsets aren't supported, and I'm well past the age where I would find it edifying or interesting to port an OS to new hardware myself. For the past 5 years or so I've been buying cheap, low-end eMachines from BestBuy and they're about as ordinary and generic as you can get. I swap drives, video and sound cards, even video acquisition cards (bt848) around without problems. -- Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis - Prouder than ever to be a member of the reality-based community |
#47
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Might not be my Hard drive
"Rocky" wrote in message ... Whatever happened to generic computers? I used to be able to swap HDs between all sorts of PCs. Was is a Dell thing I ran into? Dell had a model a few years ago that was *very* proprietary. The components were consistently crap, too. We had hard disks, video cards, fans, and power supplies fail at an unacceptable rate. The DVD/CD drives sounded like they were getting ready for take-off, and the floppy drives rumbled. Ugh. They were awful. We get new computers every couple of years, and even though the ones we just got are Vista machines, they're a ginormous improvement over the old ones. The new hardware is pretty great. I don't know what model of Dell you've got, but if it was a used machine, it could well be from the same crappy generation. -- Shelly http://www.cat-sidh.net (the Mother Ship) http://esther.cat-sidh.net (Letters to Esther) |
#48
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[OT] - Ping techy folks - Is my HD dead??
Marcel, at this point we seem to just be shotgunning this - but
are ALL your fans spinning? Even the chipset fan? The vibrating optical drive seems to me to be a blind alley. (Yeah, I know - troubleshooting by newsgroup articles, and on feel, is silly. But I'm just thinkin'.) ObDogs: a milestone of sorts. During agility class the other night, Baron started offering partial weaves to me without waiting for the command. I think he's starting to get the idea about those silly poles. -- Mark Shaw (And Baron) moc TOD liamg TA wahsnm ================================================== ======================= "If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise." - Unknown |
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