Please help. PC wont boot windows... Is my HD dead?

[chrisc3]

My PC loads the motherboard, recognizes both the 40g MAxtor 7200RPM and my DVD drive and proceeds to load windows XP. The moment the load bar lights up, it freezes for roughly a second and reboots. I'm thinking its my Harddrive...any ideas? I have tried safe mode (all types) and still the same problem, i see it loading the files and reboots just before it is about to enter.

Symptoms on my PC before this happened (and decided to reboot) seemed like some sort of lag. All my processes were closed yet every second or so, it seemed like i was spiking, but in windows....I was fairly sure only harddrive could do this. Also, i remember hearing when i turned off my PC, the HD making a noise as the motor turned off, a high pitch noise like a bomb hitting the ground type of thing lol......

This is a fairly brand new PC, i had to purchase a new barebone system not too long ago. P5B motherboard, dual core 1.8, radeon X1650, 1GIG ram (sorry i dont have the exact specifics) And just an old HD. Before i go buy things, i need some opinions...

 

[badge]

My PC loads the motherboard, recognizes both the 40g MAxtor 7200RPM and my DVD drive and proceeds to load windows XP. The moment the load bar lights up, it freezes for roughly a second and reboots. I'm thinking its my Harddrive...any ideas? I have tried safe mode (all types) and still the same problem, i see it loading the files and reboots just before it is about to enter.

Symptoms on my PC before this happened (and decided to reboot) seemed like some sort of lag. All my processes were closed yet every second or so, it seemed like i was spiking, but in windows....I was fairly sure only harddrive could do this. Also, i remember hearing when i turned off my PC, the HD making a noise as the motor turned off, a high pitch noise like a bomb hitting the ground type of thing lol......

This is a fairly brand new PC, i had to purchase a new barebone system not too long ago. P5B motherboard, dual core 1.8, radeon X1650, 1GIG ram (sorry i dont have the exact specifics) And just an old HD. Before i go buy things, i need some opinions...

Could be a number of causes including a video driver, overclock, newly added hardware, RAM, etc. I would swap out the RAM for starters. Bad RAM often causes system crashes when loading software, in your case Windows OS. HTH.

 

[Baptista]

Sounds to me like a hard drive issue. What is probably happening is that windows is flashing up a message saying the boot device is inaccessible, but it goes too quickly for you to read it. This can happen, for example, if you installed Windows with SATA mode AHCI turned on, and then later switched it to RAID. But it sounds like your HDD is IDE...?

 

[g-paw]

Definitely sounds like the hdd if it's making noises. If you get a new hdd, after you install the OS and get it updated, install the old drive and copy what you want off of it to the new drive. Make sure it's not attached when you install the OS on the new drive because it will likely screw up the drive letters, i.e., Windows will install somewhere other than on C