Operating System Cannot be Found

[Ted]

Originally Posted by ssamadhi97

What makes you think so? A failing HD is the first thing I would've suspected in this case (well, next to bad ram maybe)

Sorry about that comment. I was doing three things when I came across the thread and wasn't giving it the attention I should have.

Irish - go to your Start Menu and open the Control Panel. Click on System then the Hardware tab, then hit the Device Manager button. Open the Disk Drives section and let us know what brand HD you have. If it's not readily apparent, copy the numbers/;etters and post them here. If it's obvious what brand you have, go to their website and do as mfsljunkie suggested and download their HD diagnostics.

[irishcrazy2005]

Okay, the hard drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 80GN. I've grabbed their diagnostic and will run it when I'm home from work tonight and can actually create a bootable CD.

-Phil

Originally Posted by Ted

Irish - go to your Start Menu and open the Control Panel. Click on System then the Hardware tab, then hit the Device Manager button. Open the Disk Drives section and let us know what brand HD you have. If it's not readily apparent, copy the numbers/;etters and post them here. If it's obvious what brand you have, go to their website and do as mfsljunkie suggested and download their HD diagnostics.

If it's the original hard drive that came with the computer (which it sounds like it is) a call to tech support would probably tell him where to find the hard drive diagnostic utility on the discs that came with his computer. If it's anything like the diagnostic utility on the discs that came with my computer (which it might very well be, since Gateway and Emachines are now part of the same company), he'll have to boot up with one of the CDs, press something to get it to the command line, and then enter in a command to bring up the utility. This utility wasn't mentioned in the manual that came with my computer, so I'm thinking it's definitely not in his manual since I know their manuals these days are much smaller than the one that came with mine (I looked up his computer model, and my father's new Gateway is identical to his in every respect except for having 20 more gigs of hard drive).

[saltman]

start - my computer - right click on drive - properties - tools - run error checking.
will be scheduled to run on reboot. restart computer.... it'll go through chkdsk and locate bad blocks, etc. It's a hard drive problem not the ram. Hard drive is going bad. It could last forever or go bad next week.

[irishcrazy2005]

This is a test message. Please ignore.

[feralicious]

Originally Posted by irishcrazy2005

This is a test message. Please ignore.

Sorry, I'm just a rebel. I can't help myself.

[irishcrazy2005]

Ok, I ran the diagnostic tests from my hard drive manufacturer and it gave me a message saying that one or more sectors are corrupted. The two options for repair were to erase the whole disc or to erase the damaged sector. Here is the additional information I wrote down:

Failure Code: 0x70 - Defective Device
Technical Result Code (TRC) 701020B2

So what should I do here? If I just reformat the whole drive, will that repair it? What about if I just have it repair the sector? I have all my data backed up, but I guess that it might erase important program info or something, right? Thanks for the help everyone.

-Phil

[feralicious]

How long has it been since you've done a full reformat? If you have everything backed up I would go for it. I usually do it on my pc about once or twice a year, it gets rid of all the gunk from old programs.

And if you have a big enough HDD, I would partition it so you have about 15gb for your C drive where you'll put your operating system and programs, then use the rest for your files. Then you don't have to worry about backing stuff up if you need to reformat since you only have to do that partition.

[TheMamba]

Originally Posted by irishcrazy2005

So what should I do here? If I just reformat the whole drive, will that repair it? What about if I just have it repair the sector? I have all my data backed up, but I guess that it might erase important program info or something, right? Thanks for the help everyone.

-Phil

Thing is, Phil, you could fix the sector or reformat the drive and there's really no telling just how long it will be OK.

Similar things were happening to me a few weeks ago - weird errors on start up, etc. Finally, one day when I went to boot up it said I had bad errors. Went on to fix them and it fixed them for a couple of days max.

After that I got the same shit again, fixed DIFFERENT sectors this time, got XP up and running. From there I went to newegg.com, ordered a new hard drive, and got everything I needed off of that drive and onto my second drive. I actually had to burn 2 data DVD's because I didn't have enough room on the second drive. Each burn took me two hours!

So...is it worth trying to fix or reformat? Sure...just don't fool yourself into thinking that it's the end all to your problems. Shit, for $150 you can get yourself a brand spanking new 300 GB Western Digital drive and be done with the headaches.

[paddington]

Failure Code: 0x70 - Defective Device

red flag, man!

Drive is toast. Soon, it'll be burnt toast. You've done the right things - now obey the diag msg and get a new drive. Better to get your data off over a net connection to another machine if you can, or see if it'll read enough to burn it.

Best to plan a drive swap than have it catch you off-guard!


You COULD try recovering some bad sectors by doing this:

START -> RUN
CMD <enter>
CHKDSK /F /V /R

exactly like that, with spaces.

It'll tell you it can't fully access due to being mounted and ask if you want to schedule upon reboot. Say Y (es) and then type EXIT at the prompt to close.

Reboot and let it do its thing. Watch to see how much repair it does and whether it succeeds. It won't keep your drive from dying, but it may fix the sectors enough fpr you to recover data you are having trouble reading.

I found some cheap replacements for you here:

http://search.ebay.com/Hitachi-Travelstar-80GN

Good luck. Go buy a hard drive!

Originally Posted by jameskg

I found some cheap replacements for you here:

http://search.ebay.com/Hitachi-Travelstar-80GN

Good luck. Go buy a hard drive!

Oh goodness no. Don't tell him to replace it with a Hitachi of all things. Western Digital or Seagate is the way to go. I've been lusting after the 100 GB 5400 RPM Seagate Momentus for my laptop.

[paddington]

well, yes, you could use anything you want. Just be sure it somewhat matches the specs of you existing. More RPMs on the platters = more heat, and having more heat than the laptop is designed for can ruin it.

But yes, hitachi blows goats when it comes to HDs. Now if you want to talk rear-projection HDTV sets... they're fantastic!

[irishcrazy2005]

Ok, thanks for the responses guys. I have several answers to things you have said. First of all, I keep fairly regular DVD backups of my documents and pictures. I have all of my mp3s on my Rio Karma. So, I am pretty good as far as that stuff goes moving to a new HDD. Secondly, the computer is only one year old and I have a three year Best Buy warranty on it, so the hard drive could be RMA'd. The problem is that I would hate to have to send my damn computer off for three weeks. It sucks not having it. Finally, I already tried running Scandisk (before I even saw these posts) and it will not even run. Windows reboots and it runs a few things, but once it actually gets to the part where it scans the drive, it just gets stuck at 0%. I turned it on right before I left somewhere, and came back 4 hours later to still find it at 0%.

Anyhow, I'll probably do a reformat in a few days and see how things go. Thanks for all the help, and any more suggestions are welcome.

-Phil

[paddington]

when you say 'scandisk' you mean you ran 'chkdsk', right? You need that for NTFS to fix anything. Scandisk won't help much.

[irishcrazy2005]

Originally Posted by jameskg

when you say 'scandisk' you mean you ran 'chkdsk', right? You need that for NTFS to fix anything. Scandisk won't help much.

Yes, I actually meant chkdsk. The first three stages run okay (I forget the first one, Verify Indexes, and Check Security Descriptors), but then when it gets to "Verify File Data" it gets stuck at 0%. I don't know why it won't run.

-Phil