[chessme]

Hi, I have a dell dimension e310 running on windows xp. I downloaded a song from limewire and now both the hard drive and the cd drive have failed.
When I do hard drive diagnostics it says that:

Drive 0: ST380819AS - Fail. Return Code: 4
Drive 1: no device
Drive 2: hl-dt-st dvd +/- RW GWA4164B - Diagnostics not supported
Drive 3: No device

Do I need a new computer or is there another fix? I am unable to access anything beyond the bios.

I am unable to boot to the utility partition, unable to boot from the cd, and when I run advanced diagnostics (from the bios), I get

Error Code: 650F:2871
Msg: Optical Drive BST
Flash ROM Test Failed

Error Code: 650F:013E
IDE device failed. A possible failure is predicted by the drives S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring Analysisis and Reporting Test) status, it is advisable to immediately ba!

I need help in where to go from here... please....

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Hi chessme! Welcome to G2G!

The fact that this problem happened right after you downloaded a song (which was probably a virus) from Limewire makes me think that it's something other then actual hardware failure.

Lets have you try resetting the computer's CMOS. Please do the following:

• Turn off your computer
• Remove the power cord from the back of your computer
• Open the side panel
• Locate the CMOS battery (it's shiny stainless steel about the size of a nickel) and remove it
• Wait at LEAST five minutes
• Put the CMOS battery back in
• Re-attach the side panel
• Re-attach the power cord to the back of the computer
• Power on your computer

You will probably get a CMOS checksum error first time booting after doing this. Don't worry this is NORMAL. It only means that you need to set the date & time on your computer again. It should say to press one of the Function keys or the DEL key to enter SETUP. Do so and reset the correct date & time. Make sure you SAVE CHANGES before you exit setup.

Post back with how things are going after you do the steps listed above.

Fenor

[Fenor]

Hi chessme! Welcome to G2G!

The fact that this problem happened right after you downloaded a song (which was probably a virus) from Limewire makes me think that it's something other then actual hardware failure.

Lets have you try resetting the computer's CMOS. Please do the following:

• Turn off your computer
• Remove the power cord from the back of your computer
• Open the side panel
• Locate the CMOS battery (it's shiny stainless steel about the size of a nickel) and remove it
• Wait at LEAST five minutes
• Put the CMOS battery back in
• Re-attach the side panel
• Re-attach the power cord to the back of the computer
• Power on your computer

You will probably get a CMOS checksum error first time booting after doing this. Don't worry this is NORMAL. It only means that you need to set the date & time on your computer again. It should say to press one of the Function keys or the DEL key to enter SETUP. Do so and reset the correct date & time. Make sure you SAVE CHANGES before you exit setup.

Post back with how things are going after you do the steps listed above.

Fenor

[chessme]

Thx a ton for the advise! You wrote it so well, I was able to follow it exactly. Unfortunately, it did not fix the problem. I am still getting the same errors. While my first thought it that it is some sort of virus, can a virus cause hardware failure? If I take out the fact that it broke down after downloading from limewire, would it seem like some kind of controller failure, or something?

[Fenor]

It could very well be a virus that has written itself to the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the hard drive and caused it not to work properly. The only thing you can really do here is remove the hard drive and set it as a slave on another computer and hopefully it will be able to read it enough to backup your data and then you can put it back in its own computer and do a completely reinstall of Windows, making sure to do a Full format (and NOT a quick format) of the drive.

It also could be hardware failure, in which case you would need to get a new hard drive, but try the other option first as it is cheaper.

Fenor