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Gateway problem

S

Suki243

Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
542
Well i have this 4-5 year old computer, its a gateway. It originally came with windows ME on it. I decided to put xp on it and add a tad more ram. At first it didn't work but i found some drivers from gateway which made it work. Then it worked fine for 2 years. Now yesterday my mother said that she saw it downloading something by itself and making weird noises so she turned it off. Then today when she tried to boot it up it said
" Disk Read Error
Press ctrl+ Alt + Del to restart."
Then we pushed ctrl alt del but same thing, then i turned it off and rebooted it, same thing.
Then thinking that it was the rest of the computers fault i tried putting the hdd in another of my computers but the same error comes up. I then set it as a slave drive to at least gather some information that i need from it. But whenever i go to my computer and open it but it tells me that it needs to be formatted.
It makes really weird sounds like a soft click click click. I need to get the info on it,
I am presuming that the hard drive is dead, any suggestions? The info on it is dear.
The specs of the gateway are: 1ghz AMD processor, gateway everything, a new PSU, 215mb of ram (something like that), and an IBM 46.1 gb hdd, 7200 ATI radeon.
 
Ah yes, the click of death. Stick a fork in it, it's done. Most undoubtedly your HDD retired. Invest a couple bucks in a new HDD, and start with a fresh install of XP. Dont know what you can do to recover your data without a pile of money. Hopefully you might learn from this and remember to back up important data on a CD, DVD or other HDD. Best of luck.
 
its not really a click it just sounds like a disk rubbing against something, meaning a click is a sudden thing and this goes on for a while like if u rotate a disk and then put somehting against it is tsh tsh tsh tsh tsh.
 
For what it's worth, I still believe your hard drive gave up the ghost.The head may have crashed into the platter in the hard drive, rendering it scrap. However, I guess there are a couple of things to check. Does your hard drive show up during the Power On Self Test (POST)? Being a Gateway, all you probably see is some fancy Gateway logo at start up no doubt. If you can get into the BIOS at start up, and is your BIOS is sophisticated enough to let you know anything, you can check to see if the hard drive is recognized at start up, If it is, there may be a chance you might be able to salvage some of the data. If not, then it's going to be really tough. To enter the BIOS, usually you hold down F1, F2 or the DEL key at start up. Check your documentation if you still have it, see if you can get in. Check if the hard drive status is available.

Id love to stick around and help out, but I'm on lunch break, and I gotta get back to work. Check back later.
 
well, i booted up and was able to get into bios, it detects that there is a hdd. I looked into the System Error Log, and it said that there was CMOS System settings are not set. I exited out of bios and continued and then its says something about S.M.A.R.T drive not functioning or something like that.
 
well, now that you keep powering the drive on and off, on and off, it most certainly is done. Stick two forks in it!

If you're to have any luck recovering data, you're going to have to send it off to a data recovery lab, and they will charge a pretty penny. I believe most of them will tell you if they can recover the data or not, though.

Hard drives shouldn't make rubbing sounds. I am guessing one or more of the heads is now in permanent contact with the platter, rubbing all the precious rust off the drive and rendering at least part of the platter unreadable.

Good luck.
 
Well that drive is screwed and i dont think its work spending more than 10 bucks on for a recovery but i have a question about my current hdd, in my own computer, are there any signs that will tell me before this happens again? sometimes my own hdd makes a loud noise but only for a few seconds then it goes away. (Its a seagate SATA 80 gig). Is this normal?
 
oh shit...lol

like two metals rubbing against each other?

lol
hahaa :p

i had a deathstar before that did the same, opened it up, the disk was all scratched from the heads....
only if i had the pics...
hahaha :p
 
Suki243 said:
... sometimes my own hdd makes a loud noise but only for a few seconds then it goes away. (Its a seagate SATA 80 gig). Is this normal?
Click to expand...

Normal? no. Good? no. My drive at work ran like that for a year and never died, but did lose clusters. My drive at home made the same noise and lasted less than 2 days. You never know.

With your other drive, as long as it is recognized in the BIOS, you can stick it in another PC (if you have one), hook it up as a slave, and see what you can salvage. You might have just lost the Master File Table, or have a bad sector, and the rest could be good. Cant hurt to try.
 
well for the gateway one i hook it up as a slave already and i tried to open it but it wouldn't it would just keep on spinning and making that noise, then one time it opened up but it said that it needs to be formatted. But whenver i boot up with it on another computer it says that screen that says i should let windows check my drive. Will windows system recovery work on it?
 
Windows system recover will not work on it. Even if you get it formatted and working for a short time, it has mechanical problems. Any drive that makes audible clicking sounds or any other sound that is not typical for reading/writing is on its way out. I work at a repair shop and I get 2 customers every week that tell me, "It started making a noise about 1 month/week ago and now it just doesn't turn on."

The drive is done, cross it off. Also, back up your drive at the very least. That one doesn't sound healthy either and it would be a shame to lose all your porn.
 
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