what is wrong with my friends computer?

S

Seraphim974

Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2003
Messages
928
I was wondering what the heck is wrong with my friend's computer......beeeeccauuuseee, i broke it:

7800 gt
some sort of Gigabyte board
WD 80GB ata100 HDD
athlon 64 3200+
nice nice PSU
windows xp pro SP1

So I was playing Battlefield 2 and all of a sudden the computer went immediately to one of those blue screens (not the typical BSOD), but one a darker shade blue that says windows is going to shut down the computer to prevent damage to the hardware. I think the significant part of the message mentioned the following : HD_BOOTDISC_UNMOUNTABLE. Perhaps not exactly that but something very similar. Has anyone ever heard of this? Restarting the computer will not remedy it, it returns right to the blue screen after its done with its initial Babeling.

Never, when turning on the computer, is there any hint that the computer even knows that there is an OS installed. That is also why I thought that it might be the HDD.

We tried securing the connections to every single thing in the computer, and we also tried removing the CMOS battery for 20+ seconds (no luck finding any sort of CMOS jumper though).

I assumed the hard drive but he wanted to see if i could get an answer from you guys before he went ahead and bought one.

Any suggestions
 
Ok,

Start at the beginning. First off Does the computer POST?

can it get to where it is looking to boot from something??
 
This is a common error, actually. Generally shows its ugly head in the early stages of a hard drive death or when you use a 40-wire IDE cable when you should be using an 80-wire.

My programming skills are a little rusty.. but this will help...

Function Fix_Error(harddrive as object)
Navigate(http://www.hgst.com)
Download(DFT)
Dim Result as Boolean
B0rk3d = Test(HDD)
If Result = True Then
Exit Function
Else
Boot(Windows Recovery Console)
Run(chkdsk /f)
Restart(box3n)
End If
End Function
 
hahaha i went to my friends dorm and he said that he ordered an off-brand 160 GB ATA100 hdd.

hes smart
 
Schro said:
My programming skills are a little rusty.. but this will help...

Function Fix_Error(harddrive as object)
Navigate(http://www.hgst.com)
Download(DFT)
Dim Result as Boolean
B0rk3d = Test(HDD)
If Result = True Then
Exit Function
Else
Boot(Windows Recovery Console)
Run(chkdsk /f)
Restart(box3n)
End If
End Function
Click to expand...

mine are non-existant, where do i input this? and is it input exactly as is?
 
I would've just run the WD diagnostic on it. I had to run it on a WD 80GB drive of mine that was still under warranty when it died, so I could send the results to WD and get the drive replaced. It'll tell you if the drive is toast or not. Or if it has to fix bad sectors but then tells you the drive is ok, don't count on it.

I was also wondering if you were overclocking his computer, perhaps the hard drive was on an IDE channel that wasn't locked down and caused the hard drive partition to become corrupted and unusable?

If that's the case, repartitoning and reformating the drive would solve the problem... assuming you didn't kill the partition again by the same method as before.
 
Seraphim974 said:
mine are non-existant, where do i input this? and is it input exactly as is?
Click to expand...

Hehehe. There's nowhere in to input it.. . I was putting diagnosis information into the form of programming logic to amuse myself...

Translation:
First, goto www.hgst.com and download their DFT (drive fitness test)- run this from a boot disk and see if the hard drive passes. If it fails, go buy a new hard drive.

If the disk passes, then boot to the windows XP recovery console (either from your XP cd or from that 6 floppy set that you can download from M$'s website) and run the following command:

Chkdsk /f

This will fix the disk error that you're seeing if the drive isn't b0rk3d.

The other thing to make sure of if the drive itsn't b0rk3d, is to make sure you have a good cable- 40wire IDE cables are the most common cause for this particular error.
 
forgot to check the type of cable, will do after class

ill give an update soon, something here is bound to work or solve something


and...yeah.. i was kinda eyeballing the BorK3D part of your basic
 
The type of cable shouldn't make the system unbootable between 40 wire and 80 wire. Worst case scenario it would make the drive run at the slower ata33 speeds that 40 wire was designed for. You probably have a bad drive or something about to die in that system as someone stated before. I'd grab some diagnostics utils from the manufacturer and test the hell out of it.
 
defakto said:
The type of cable shouldn't make the system unbootable between 40 wire and 80 wire. Worst case scenario it would make the drive run at the slower ata33 speeds that 40 wire was designed for. You probably have a bad drive or something about to die in that system as someone stated before. I'd grab some diagnostics utils from the manufacturer and test the hell out of it.
Click to expand...

Wrong. Unless the BIOS is smart enough to knock the speed down to ATA33 (most aren't), it will hose the Windoze install. Most BIOSes aren't smart enough to notice the cable types- and even those that do notice the cable types will still blindly set your ATA speed to 100....

I've run into this issue on a few dozen different machines.
 
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