[JerryJustin]

I have a lovely little compy that I built myself. Alas, it is no longer working properly. I came back from a weekend vacation to discover that my 1 hour battery backup was not sufficient for the 1.5 hour blackout. And my computer has been completely different since.

It used to be moody about booting...It was like that since I built it. For some reason, if it were booted after having been turned off, it would stall as it was checking the RAM and so on. It would get a little farther each time you would reset it, until it booted Windows (2K), and then it would work properly.

Well, now, even though it will get to Windows (eventually---much slower than it used to after being turned off), even after reformatting the hard drive, it seems to have disk errors all the time. I started noticing this once I tried to replace everything that I had backed up back on the hard drive. The USB hard drive would get part of the way and then claim that there was a $NT or a $MF error.

So, how can I go about figuring out what the problem is? I am not afraid to learn, just talk slowly. It isn't urgent, since I have a functional laptop, but I would like to get this fixed as soon as I can.

Thanks for any help anyone can give!

-JR

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Aaaaand, now the computer doesn't think there are any hard drives connected to it.

Maybe that will help with the diagnosis..?

[JerryJustin]

Aaaaand, now the computer doesn't think there are any hard drives connected to it.

Maybe that will help with the diagnosis..?

[Zhequajah]

These are some things to try.
Try the Hard Drive in a good computer, if its good try a good power supply in your computer. If its still bad try a memory test in your computer, Surf the web for MEMTest 86 download it and make a floppy with a good computer use the floppy to boot your computer even with a bad HDD. When you test the memory in your computer, you actually are testing 3 things, the CPU, the motherboard and the memory stick/(s) each must be isolated one at a time with from each other with good units but only if there are errors. If that test goes well the next step is to make sure the pins to the HDD power plug are tight and not spread out open. The next step is to clear the DMI Pool in CMOS. CAUTION HERE! SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP AT THIS POINT
Then if its still bad the hdd may be recoverable for a short time by freezing it. It thats the case you are better off to get a new hard drive as cheap as they are are today.

IF YOU TRY THE ABOVE STEPS RE-READ THE ITEMS AND STUDY THEM WELL (OTHER SOURCES TOO) AS YOU CAN MAKE THE FRONT WHEELS GO FWD AND THE BACK WHEELS BACKWARDS IF IT WERE A CAR INSTEAD OF A COMPUTER.

I hope that helps - Z

[Tyger]

If it's win2K it will only work in another machine with the same chipset, the NTFS windows don't like being swapped around. What I would do in your case is using any computer go to the drive maker's site and make a diagnostic boot floppy to test the hard drive. If it's bad you can copy the whole operating system and files to a new drive. If it's good you've eliminated one possibility.

Edited by Tyger, 29 November 2005 - 10:09 PM.