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So the other day my uncle called me to do some computer work. Setup Outlook with his new e-mail and do some general house cleaning. Part of what I did was uninstall an outdated copy of Symantec Corporate Anti-Virus and installed the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials (...a day before the final version got released). MSE starts going through its first run update and scan procedure so I leave it be.
The next day I get a call back, his computer won't boot into Windows. It gets as far as the screen with the blue Dell bar at the top passes the "PBR" check but then says "Disk Read Error. Press Crtl-Alt-Del to Restart."
Upon further inspection the hard drive is in some sort of seek loop. Three short seeks followed by a long one. A few moments later and it does it again. It is not making any clicks or sounds I would call unusual.
I move the drive to another computer and it does the same thing, but holds XP from booting all the way. It gets past the logo screen, but hangs on the black screen between the logo and login. I ripped apart my external drive for its IDE to USB adapter and while making the noise, it freezes the computer until I turn the drive off. Then XP acts like nothing happened. I should mention that the first time I plugged it in USB, the drive was recognized but Windows froze before "The drive is ready to use". Now it just freezes without being recognized.
Any ideas? Maybe a low-level program that would be worth trying? And since there is important data he needs, if all else fails, what is a good option for a professional data recovery company (He knows it would be $500+)? And after this, he is going to get a backup solution.
The drive is a Seagate 7200.7 80gb IDE.
The next day I get a call back, his computer won't boot into Windows. It gets as far as the screen with the blue Dell bar at the top passes the "PBR" check but then says "Disk Read Error. Press Crtl-Alt-Del to Restart."
Upon further inspection the hard drive is in some sort of seek loop. Three short seeks followed by a long one. A few moments later and it does it again. It is not making any clicks or sounds I would call unusual.
I move the drive to another computer and it does the same thing, but holds XP from booting all the way. It gets past the logo screen, but hangs on the black screen between the logo and login. I ripped apart my external drive for its IDE to USB adapter and while making the noise, it freezes the computer until I turn the drive off. Then XP acts like nothing happened. I should mention that the first time I plugged it in USB, the drive was recognized but Windows froze before "The drive is ready to use". Now it just freezes without being recognized.
Any ideas? Maybe a low-level program that would be worth trying? And since there is important data he needs, if all else fails, what is a good option for a professional data recovery company (He knows it would be $500+)? And after this, he is going to get a backup solution.
The drive is a Seagate 7200.7 80gb IDE.
