[Rickie]

I have a rather frustrating problem at the moment:

Whenever I start up the computer[turning on the power at the source then pressing the ON button], the DVD drive will start, the power light will blink on...but the HDD light won't, and I can hear the distinct lack of the HDD making the noises of it...working.

Turning it off and on just this morning, took 20 goes for it to start up. On one of them, it hung at the Windows XP loading screen. Finally on the 20th it worked.

This is happening every single time now...I figure there's something wrong with the HDD or power supply to it. Dunno.


Does anyone have any advice?

EDIT: It turned out to be a dying power supply. Replaced, works fine.

Edited by Rickie, 04 March 2008 - 09:03 PM.

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Difficult to diagnose without any error messages, but you could test the hard disk with the maker's own diagnostic utility from their website.
Seagate-Maxtor (all one company now), Western Digital & Samsung all provide these utilities, but the tool is only compatible with their own brand so you'll need to establish what make your system hard drive is first. If the test comes up with no faults well at least you've got that out of the way and can start looking elsewhere for the cause.

The diagnostic utility runs from a bootable floppy or CD so it doesn't matter if Windows won't start, the test can still be performed.

Edited by pip22, 01 March 2008 - 05:08 PM.

[pip22]

Difficult to diagnose without any error messages, but you could test the hard disk with the maker's own diagnostic utility from their website.
Seagate-Maxtor (all one company now), Western Digital & Samsung all provide these utilities, but the tool is only compatible with their own brand so you'll need to establish what make your system hard drive is first. If the test comes up with no faults well at least you've got that out of the way and can start looking elsewhere for the cause.

The diagnostic utility runs from a bootable floppy or CD so it doesn't matter if Windows won't start, the test can still be performed.

Edited by pip22, 01 March 2008 - 05:08 PM.

[Rickie]

The diagnostic tool didn't pick up any problems, it said the drive passed...so I dunno.