PC will not boot, has to with a HD problem

[chunkydome]

Here's what I did: I turned on my PC the other day and I hear a buzzing sound. So I open up the case to see what it is (PC is still on because this has happened before). The power cable attached to the hard drive is hitting the fan so I begin to move it away from the fan (The PC is still on). Then I look up and notice the monitor looks frozen on the login screen. It won't do anything. So I look back at the hard drive and notice the power cable about halfway out of the socket. So, I turn the PC off by holding the power button and plug the HD back in.

But now, when I try to boot the PC it shows the ASUS motherboard screen, something to do with J Micron (as usual), and then the screen where it shows a flashing white line in the top left hand corner (also as usual). The problem is that it never gets past that screen.

I went to the BIOS on the next boot up and all the parts are being detected all right and I think the hard drives are physically fine. But I have no idea about where to go from here. Any ideas?

 

[Dame1701]

Hmmm, if the computer crashed, which from your description - it sounds like it did, it is possible this was becuase the cable for the HDD was moved while the system was powered up.

Bearing this in mind, it is entirely possible that you have damaged either the drive or the controller. Such damage may affect a relatively minor part of the Controller or Drive in such a way that everything would appear to work as normal. However enough damage may have occured to prevent the system from booting.

On a brighter note it is possible that you have only corrupted the MBR, though this would normally show up as the system being unable to read the drive properly. In your case, it seems to be hanging. My advice would be to try and run the Windows setup CD / DVD and see if it is able to detect the drive. From there you can perform a repair of the operating system which might get you up and running again.

If of course this doesn't work, try another drive and see if you have any success. If not, then I suspect you'll be on the lookout for a new motherboard or perhaps a SATA controller on a PCI / PCI-E card.

 

[apache_lives]

Totally remove and plug back in the hdd and the cable etc and see what that does. Highly unlikely its damaged anything.

 

[daleyboy]

i agree .. check all cables and components and reseat all pci/agp cards and RAM. If one cable came loose quite possible that something else did as well

 

[roadrunner197069]

Use windows cd and do a repair.

 

[chunkydome]

alright, I'll reset the suggested parts and take a look at all of the cables

I also tried a different hard drive after the first one would not boot, and this one didn't boot either, so I am assuming it isn't a hard drive problem

could someone explain how the motherboard controller works?

 

[chunkydome]

ok, so problem has been solved
as it turns out, the pc was trying to boot from the external hard drive that i forgot was connected...or atleast thats what i think happened. it finally booted correctly after i removed the external hard drive, oh well

 

[kidd_01]

my acer aspire 5100 always stuck when i do my work