OT: Computer Help Needed, Please!

Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/27/2006, 8:24 AM

Some time between when I shut down last night and this morning when I rebooted my "communications/online" computer developed a problem.

When I tried to boot up I got "Disk read error occured. Pres Alt, Ctrl, Del to continue." That didn't help.

I ran chkdsk and got "Volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems."

Then I tried to boot from the Windows XP CD to fix the problem and that didn't work either.

After that, I switched out the hard drives and got the same disk read error message. So I presumed it wasn't the disk.

So I got a new cable and plugged that in and that didn't work.

Now, the only thing I can think of is there must be something wrong on the motherboard... Yes or no?

If anyone has any other ideas or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate hearing them!

Thank you in advance.

Comments

Former user wrote on 7/27/2006, 8:27 AM

Can you get into the BIOS and see if your clock is correct?

A low battery can do funny things, althought I have not seen this from a bad battery.

Do you have more than one drive connected on this computer?

Dave T2

Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/27/2006, 8:43 AM

Dave, the clock is fine.

Yes, there are two hard drives. I checked both.

winrockpost wrote on 7/27/2006, 10:17 AM

can you get into safe mode ? and do some checking, F8

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/27/2006, 10:50 AM

Can you move the drive to a different IDE channel and modify the BIOS to boot from the other channel? If they are SATA try and do likewise to get it to boot from a different SATA port.

~jr

MichaelS wrote on 7/27/2006, 11:08 AM

Jay,

I ran into a similar problem a few months back. It turned out to be the RAM sticks. Not sure of why the problem developed, but the process of removing them and replacing them back into their slots solved that delimma.

Also, if you have an extra IDE interface on board...remove it and try to boot. I've had bad experiences with both scenarios.

It might be worth a try.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/27/2006, 1:31 PM

Can't get into safe mode.

Have tired moving the drive and booting.

Will try removing the RAM sticks and replacing them.

Thanks to all, so far!

Former user wrote on 7/27/2006, 1:37 PM

Are you able to get into Bios?

IF you can't get to safe mode, that could indicate a motherboard problem.

Dave T2

fldave wrote on 7/27/2006, 2:04 PM

if you have important things on the drive (documents, settings, etc.) that are not backed up, go buy a new boot drive. Reinstall OS, programs, etc. Hook up the "dead" drive to a channel and try to access it. If you can, recover everything you can in prep for a full deep format (if you want to risk using the drive for something else.)

If you still can't read the drive, you may need to use a disk utility. I can't recommend any off the top of my head, there were fairly recent previous threads mentioning ones that were good.

johnmeyer wrote on 7/27/2006, 5:35 PM

I would put the drive in another computer, as a slave, or as a master on the secondary channel, and make sure you can read from it.

First thing I would do is visit the BIOS, as others have said. I don't think you've yet mentioned whether you've done that. Sometimes merely going into the BIOS, and saving the settings, even without making changes, is enough for the computer to re-read the disk drive settings and place them into the BIOS.

I would remove and then re-seat all the disk drive cables on both primary and secondary channels. They might have worked loose from thermal changes.

The power supply is always a suspect. I have had a similar message when I built my own computers and didn't connect the power supply properly.

DrLumen wrote on 7/27/2006, 7:12 PM

In the BIOS, see if the drive is being detected. It should say something like Drive 0: or IDE Master 1:: WD200040. If not, it is likely your drive controller as you tried a known good drive that didn't work.

Like was suggested, try the suspect drive in another system or on another channel. Reseating memory and cables wont hurt but from what you have said, I would suspect the drive controller on the system board. But, all is not lost, you can get a drive controller card (IDE or SATA) and try it. It may fix the problems without having to replace your system board - just disable the onboard drive controllers.

If the drive does not work in another system and you are unable to FDISK the drive, you can try to debug the drive (google debugging hard drives) but I would save this a last resort and would expect to lose all the data. An example is at Erase Drive Partition Info

Good Luck!

Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/28/2006, 8:18 AM

Thanks to everyone who offered up suggestions.

Finally, due to time constraints, I handed it over to a professional IT person.

Grazie wrote on 7/28/2006, 8:27 AM

Good Man!!

vicmilt wrote on 7/28/2006, 8:48 AM

Jay -
Sorry for your dilemma - please let us know what the IT pro found.
v

vicmilt wrote on 7/28/2006, 8:48 AM

Jay -
Sorry for your dilemma - please let us know what the IT pro found.
v

TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/28/2006, 10:07 AM

i had a simular problem a while back. Ends up a power surge partly fried the PSU & that intern partly fried the MB. Send the MB back to ASUS & they fixed/replaced it free. :D