LibriumArcana.Games

It's waaay too hot to the touch, just like Nit with his fever.

A friend tried to run Knoppix (sp), but it would not boot, until he unhookd the harddrive. He is currently testing the drive downstairs on his comp.

PS: On Nit's comp...don't expect quick replies

Sounds like your hard drive might have bit the dust dear. They shouldn't get quite that hot.

Hard drives to run hot to the touch if they have been on a while, especially if the airflow around them isn't very good. It feeling hot, especially if you have never felt a normally running hard drive before, does not necessarily mean it has died.

Now, if the CD wouldn't boot until the hard drive was unplugged, that leads me to either 1) the wiring is done incorrectly. If it was working fine before, and you haven't touched anything inside before it died, then this is probably not it. 2) The hard drive died. Need more information to say for sure there. Does it work when hooked to another computer? 3) One of the cables has gone bad. Unlikly to me since the CD and HDD are usally on different cables, again see if it works in another computer or 4) the motherboard is screwy. Not enough information to jump to that conclusion.

Once you have tried the hard drive in the other computer, come back with those results and we can continue looking into it.

With help from the guy downstairs, I've discovered that the hardrive (WinXP) will run as a Slave to his computer, but will not boot whatsoever as a Master

I have recovered an older harddrive from an old box... how old? WinME, AIM 5.9, 600X800 screen. It will run as a master, god help me... but that does mean that it's not the computer, right? It's the XP hardDrive that's the problem. Right?

LadyTevar wrote:With help from the guy downstairs, I've discovered that the hardrive (WinXP) will run as a Slave to his computer, but will not boot whatsoever as a Master

warning: next paragraph it me kinda rambling.

Ok, so it will run as an additional drive, but still won't boot. (Slave has a specific meaning: it refers to how it is wired, not how it boots, but I'll assume he meant additional (which is indeed slave most the time, but not necessarily).

It will run as a master, god help me... but that does mean that it's not the computer, right? It's the XP hardDrive that's the problem. Right?

Alrighty, here are the facts we know so far:

• Your drive works, but won't boot.
  Makes me think software problem on the XP drive.
• CD won't boot when hard drive is hooked up, but does when it is not.
  This tells me that the BIOS boot order is set up to check the hard drive first, then if it is not a valid boot device, move on to the CD and try that.
  
  For some reason, the hard drive hangs: it doesn't fail outright, but it obviously won't work either.
• Old hard drive boots just fine.
  Confirms that the rest your computer hardware is operating normally.

With the above evidence, my best theory so far is the MBR is messed up on the XP hard drive. Here is what I would try to fix it:

Hook up the hard drive as master on your computer, and dig out your Windows XP install CD, and put it in the drive.

Turn on the computer, watch on the screen for a prompt that says something like "Press DEL to enter setup" (the key is different for different manufactuers). Press that key and enter BIOS setup.

Under a section genrally called basic config, you should see an option called Boot Order. Select that and change it so your CD ROM is higher on the list than your hard drive.

Be sure to change nothing else in the setup screen. Save and exit.

Your computer should reboot, and start booting off the Windows CD. When it comes up with Windows Setup, it will give you an option that says "press R for the recovery console". Press R, and moments later, you will be at a command line.

At this command line. type

fixmbr

and press enter.

Here is one of Microsoft's pages on that command if you are interested, but there really is nothing there to worry about.

When that command finishes (should take just a few seconds), take the XP CD out of the drive, and restart the computer (control + alt + delete should work here if not, just use the power button)

See what happens. If I'm right, you should be greeted by the Windows loading screen.


It might be a good idea to wait and see if someone on SDN colloborates this, as I am not 100% sure this is the best way to go, but I am about 90% sure it is and 95% sure that even if it isn't, it won't hurt anything.

PROBLEM: Cannot find WinXP CD.

Nuts. That changes things, I'm not sure how to do it without the CD. I'm going to have to research it, so I probably won't have a solution until morning (I am going to bed soon).

There might be a way to do it from your Win ME drive, but I dunno, need to look it up.

You might want to try borrowing a disc (needs to be WinXP, other versions won't work) from a friend or something. If that is not possible, one of us will think something up by morning.

If needed, I could overnight upload my WinXP image and hope you have a burner.

Assuming it is the MBR you need an XP CD, there's no way around it.
What does 'won't boot' mean, exatctly? The OS will start loading but hang somewhere, won't start loading, period, or won't the bloody HDD even show up? Generally I'm with Adam but a few more details would be helpful.

Turn on computer.
BIOS starts.
Black Screen... ... .... ..... ..... .........
White words, BlackScreen, explaining Windows has an error and asking if you want to try running in SafeMode, Normal Mode, etc. Countdown from 30 to restart in Normal Mode.

Counter freezes. Up/Down Arrows frozen. Can't select any mode to run in, can't escape the screen.

Techie at work suggested a 'pin might be loose' on the MBR. I'm going to search behind the bed where all the computer boxes are stored to see if I can find a restore disk in with them.

Okay, since Windows does try to start I doubt it's the MBR (nevertheless check back with Adam to be sure) and it's definitely not a hardware problem, looks like the OS is on the fritz.
As you probably have tried safe mode unsuccessfully yeah, you'll need a restore or OS disk.
And a 'pin might be loose' on the MBR? Does that guy even know what an MBR is?

That's my comment, hon... He's trying to say that whatever makes the difference between a Master and a Slave drive is screwy.

Batman wrote:Okay, since Windows does try to start I doubt it's the MBR (nevertheless check back with Adam to be sure) and it's definitely not a hardware problem, looks like the OS is on the fritz.
As you probably have tried safe mode unsuccessfully yeah, you'll need a restore or OS disk.

Agreed. You will probably want to do a repair install, available on the CD again. I can think of no way around not having the CD handy right now.

LadyTevar wrote:That's my comment, hon... He's trying to say that whatever makes the difference between a Master and a Slave drive is screwy.

That is a little jumper on the back of the hard drive.



My crude red arrows in my bad bad picture points to the pins. Notice the little black jumper connected to two of the pins? That should be on all the way, and connected to the correct pins. There is a diagram on the top of the hard drive that tells you what pins should be used.


But, that said, I seriously doubt that is the problem, since it probably wouldn't work at all if that wasn't connected properly.

Need to find a XP cd now, it is your best hope.

LadyTevar wrote:That's my comment, hon... He's trying to say that whatever makes the difference between a Master and a Slave drive is screwy.

Ah, okay. My bad. The MBR has nothing whatsoever to do with the master/slave distinction.
You can forget about the master/slave thing. Apparently the HDD DOES bot, it simply doesn't get very far. If you can see Windows trying to boot it's the next best thing to physically impossible for this to be a hardware problem.

The problem is either related to a physical problem with the disk(I.E corrupted sectors) or the install just borked.

Format, hope for the best. Maybe get Knoppix to run the Linux version of Chkdisk on the drive.

The techie installed the WinXP hardrive as a slave, with NO MASTER DRIVE.. and it booted.

He's running scan disk now :thewall:

running scandisk now

Neato.

Disk is crashing every 10 minutes. Had to go back to the WinME disk... which isn't much better.

Need $62 + tax for new 80gig, 8mb cache drive. Until then... my time online is LIMITED.

Thanks to DS, I have a new Harddrive, and I managed to find a Restore disk with WinXP :)

So... once I get AntiVir and Spybot, I'll be goldne once again :)

And there was much rejoicing!

Yay~!

So much for me being certain it was not a hardware problem.
Good on you, M'lady.