HDD failure ??

[mysunshines]

Okay , i have been trying to do a fresh install of operating systems , but it wont fully boot up afterward....i tried doing Win2000, but when i install and boot up , it boots all the way up till the last progress bar then freezes , i tried formatting the drive 3 times and reinstalling W2K from CD but it does the same thing , so then i formatted again and installed Win 98 , again , it wont boot up , it gets as far as "verifying DMI data" , then goes into a choice menu of "boot from HDD" - or "boot from CD" , it will not boot from the HDD and gives me an error signal "Boot disk failure"

The drive was working perfectly until i decided to do a fresh install , could it possibly be due to using partition Magic to do the first format ????

is it a faulty HDD or something in BIOS , any suggestions please ??

 

[marneus]

get a boot-disk & do a full FFR on your HDD (Fdisk to remove & put in new partitions) format then reload the OS...

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...

 

[mysunshines]

thanks ,but fdisk wont work on a NTFS drive will it ???

what do i use instead , i have tried using the four Win2K boot disks then deleting all the partitions on the drive and creating new NTFS partitions , but the same boot freeze-up occurs after installation .

ps , after installing W2K , it will boot up in safe mode...but that aint fixing it

plenty confusicated'

 

[DOOM]

These are other things to check:

* Are FSB/Mem/AGP/PCI/CPU timings and frequencies all at nominal spec (not overclocked)?
* Is HSF properly mounted on CPU? Also check northbridge, if it has a HS.
* Are you running sufficient wattage?
* Is your BIOS updated to the most recent version? Try flushing your CMOS.
* If you're running two memory sticks, try just one, or try a different brand.
* I doubt your HDD is at fault, but if you want, try doing a low-level format on your HDD (see below).
* If nothing seems to work, it could be a bad mobo.

<b>To do a low-level format:</b>
Go to the HDD manufacturer's web page and download the "low-level format" utility for your drive. Run that against your drive to completely zero out the entire media surface. Then do a Win2k install from CD.

If you can't boot from your Win2k CD, you can FDISK and Format the drive as FAT32, boot to floppy, and initiate a Win2k install from CD. When it lets you choose your destination drive/partition, tell it you want to convert the drive to NTFS.

When you FDISK, be sure to run FDISK /MBR first to initialize the master boot record.

-DOOM
______________________________

<pre>MOV AX,0040
MOV DS,AX
MOV WORD PTR [0072],1234
CLI
JMP FFFF:0000</pre><p>

 

[khha4113]

but fdisk wont work on a NTFS drive will it ???

Yes, it will. The NTFS volume would show as <b>Non-DOS</b> partition.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[mysunshines]

okay , i think you got it,.......

the northbridge HSF is not working , probably havea cooked northbridge chipset , taking it back to the shop.

thankyou kindly for reply , have a beautiful day )

 

[DOOM]

the northbridge may not be fried. it may have overheated just enough to lose stability and hang the system, but not enough to cause physical damage. i'd imagine that increased memory/disk usage would naturally cause the northbridge to heat up, then once it hung, all the I/O activity would stop, causing the northbridge to cool off because it's just sitting idle... i'm just conjecturing here.

in any case, if you can't replace the mobo easily, try just replacing the fan on the northbridge first and see if that works. also, try removing the hs from the northbridge and applying some thermal compound and reseating it. be sure to use a very thin, even amount and don't slop it over the edges of the chip.

btw, what mobo/chipset do you have? i have a gigabyte 8sg667 (sis 648) and i removed the noisy northbridge fan, seemingly incurring no ill effects.

-DOOM
______________________________

<pre>MOV AX,0040
MOV DS,AX
MOV WORD PTR [0072],1234
CLI
JMP FFFF:0000</pre><p>

 

[mysunshines]

hmm , i thought we had fixed it by replacing the chipset HSF at the shop , we even formatted the drive and installed Win XP on the drive and everything worked fine , they formatted the drive again and i bought it home , but now i can only get it to boot up to the point where the screen says "press F1 to continue,hit DEL to enter setup...etc , but at this point it freezes , and the keyboard goes dead , i cant use any keyboard function at all.
i tried a different keyboard,
i tried clearing CMOS , but that acheived nothing , and i cant boot it off a FDD boot disk because the FDD wont run at startup and i cant get into BIOS to change the boot sequence because the keyboard goes dead...... ((

my system is
Gigabyte 7VAXP
XP2000
WD 20 Gig 7200 HDD
Kingmax 512 M DDR 333
Hercules MX
450 watt PSU

 

[DOOM]

What does it say before "press f1 to continue, hit del to enter setup"?

It's starting to look like you have a bad motherboard. Unless you're doing something strange like running your box right next to a 10-inch subwoofer.

-DOOM
______________________________

<pre>MOV AX,0040
MOV DS,AX
MOV WORD PTR [0072],1234
CLI
JMP FFFF:0000</pre><p>

 

[mysunshines]

wow , what a curly one , finally traced it to an intermitantly faulty hard drive AND a faulty stick of DDR Ram.....replaced both , now its flying again.

I suspect the RAM has been faulty for a while ,we picked that up using a RAM Stress testing app.


thanks