Urgent Help! Boot disk failure, insert system disk and press enter

[vibes]

My sister accidentally dropped the tower PC and whenever I turn on the computer it brings up the following message: Boot disk failure, insert system disk and press enter. It also makes this weird noise when it starts.

I went into BIOS and the hard drive doesn't show up in there. I also tried repairing it with the Windows Vista CD but it didn't work. I tried doing a clean install of Windows Vista but Windows Vista couldn't find any hard drive.

What is wrong with the PC? Please help ASAP. I'm taking online courses and my essays need to be submitted by tomorrow night.

 

[kg4icg]

open up the case and make sure the cables are connected

 

[vibes]

You mean the cables on the hard drive? I checked that and the cables were connected properly.

 

[gazza_27]

I recently had just this problem (though not after a drop, just random).

Unfortunately for me, the hard drive was totalled, although data was probably recoverable I would have had to send it away and pay around $100 for data recovery.

Good luck, but sounds like your hard drive might be dead. Make sure SATA cable hasn't come unplugged on motherboard, and if it hasn't try putting the hard drive in another computer if you can to see if it can be read, and if you can get your data from it.

Just goes to show the importance of backups (as I learned myself from my recent incident).

 

[MrLinux]

You could try taking the drive out and connecting it to another PC; but, If the cables are all OK, and the BIOS can't see it, the chances are it's dead.

 

[vibes]

I think the hard drive might have messed up as well. Will putting it in the freezer make it work again? How do I go about doing that? I would appreciate it if I could receive a quick reply. Thank you kg4icg, gazza_27, and MrLinux for your help! I really appreciate it.

 

[Paperdoc]

I'd definitely try hooking the HDD up to another computer. Just to be sure, use different cables, too. My guess is the odds of having shaken loose or broken something in the original computer are higher than having broken the hard drive itself. However, a ruined hard drive is a real possibility. The swap will answer whether it can be used or not.

 

[ram1009]

The HDD is going to be the first thing to fail in a dropped PC. You are probably going to have to send the drive to a recovery specialist to recover the data. Write to that guy who thinks he knows where to get data recovered feo $100 as the last time I priced it recovery was about 10 times that amount. You don't say what kind of computer you have. If you built it yourself you might luck out by buying a new HDD (you're going to have to do this anyway) and installing the new HDD as the boot drive and installing the old HDD as a secondary drive. It's possible it can still be read but just won't boot. If that's the case you can reinstall your OS and migrate files from the old HDD to the new HDD at your liesure. If your computer is store bought you may be able to do the same thing by buying a new HDD from the manufacturer. Most store bought computers have the BIOS & boot sectors configured to only recognize each other so that you must buy replacement parts from the maker. Good luck.