Is My PC Finally Dead?

markos1963

Perhaps in sympathy with Steve Jobs sad demise my PC seems to have some sort of terminal malaise

When I start it up it gets as far as the windows logo just prior to the sign on screen and everything goes black with just a mouse pointer for company.

I have tried pressing F12 during opening and I get the options screen up but if I select any of the options ie boot from hard drive the same thing happens.

Looking at the front of the case the power light is on and the hard drive light is flickering.

The machine is getting on for seven years old, it's a Dell 4600 with Pentium 4 processor and running XP home edition.

Any ideas?

NervexProf

After 4 years it couild be that your CMOS battery needs replacing.

An easy task and inexpensive.

see here: http://www.ehow.com/facts_4913435_sympt ... g-bad.html

Mad Roadie

can you try safe mode with networking as a boot up option/

neiltb

symptomatic of a hard drive on the way out. If you have the XP disk, you should be able to repair the install, if that works, I recommend a full back up and hard drive pronto.

Or if you have the install disk, buy new hard drive, install XP and hope you can access the data on the drive.

verylonglegs

neiltb wrote:

symptomatic of a hard drive on the way out. If you have the XP disk, you should be able to repair the install, if that works, I recommend a full back up and hard drive pronto.

Or if you have the install disk, buy new hard drive, install XP and hope you can access the data on the drive.

You may well be on the money, exact same symptoms for me was a hard drive failure. Was a six year old machine so I built a new one and was able to plug the old drive into new machine and access the files.

Cleat Eastwood

when my HD died on me i used a live cd to recover the info. if you have any info you need recovering you just download a linux liveCD from here

http://www.livecdlist.com/

I used knoppix

You burn the image to a cd load it in your PC and you can access the dead hard drive and save some files.

Soz for a bit of a rushed response but for further info just google live cd recovery.

Gizmodo

NervexProf wrote:

After 4 years it couild be that your CMOS battery needs replacing.
An easy task and inexpensive.
see here: http://www.ehow.com/facts_4913435_sympt ... g-bad.html

This is definitely NOT the issue - a dead CMOS battery will not affect the loading of the operating system and would present an error message asking you to press a key to continue well before Windows started to even load.

neiltb is more than likely correct. If "Safe Mode" won't load Windows then it is probably a hard disk issue.

DrKJM

I had a similar issue and got the techs at work - I work as an analyst in an IT department - to put the hard drive in a cradle and got the data off that way. You can buy USB enclosures from ebay. They used to be about a fiver. Put the drive in that and you can mount it like any other usb drive. Might be another option if the drive really is on the way out. I'd suspect the XP build first though and try to reinstall that.

DIESELDOG

OP, you can still post = profit.

Negative You're running a Dell. The HTO has given me grief over it it for a long time.

Love n hugs

DD

Stewie Griffin

NervexProf wrote:

After 4 years it couild be that your CMOS battery needs replacing.

An easy task and inexpensive.

see here: http://www.ehow.com/facts_4913435_sympt ... g-bad.html

Won't go as far as the OP says his does. My pc fell over within seconds of switching on when my motherboard battery went.

markos1963

Thanks all
Well I have a new HD put away somewhere, will have a look for it and give it a try as I have the back up windows CD that came with the PC. How do I access any data on the old HD? Do I have to run it as a slave?

bompington

Have you actually tried safe mode? F12 on startup just gives you the choice of where to boot from, not how to boot, what you need is the F8 key, repeatedly (cos it's never clear exactly when you really need to press it) until you see the text screen with boot options, select safe mode & see if it boots up.
If it does, use it to get any data you want off the disc before you do anything else. But you already have everything backed up already, right?
You might be able to find out what's wrong (start -> run -> eventvwr for example) or even fix it. System restore might work, and you might be able to repair by reinstalling windows.
If you're reinstalling windows on a new disc (and that may well be the best thing to do) then leave the old disc out until it's up and running, then plug it in wherever you can, it shouldn't need any master/slave type settings. Or do as a couple of posters have suggested, get a USB case for it and you have a handy external backup drive (although there would have to be questions on its reliability wouldn't there?)
Wherever you put it, don't get confused between your old disc and the new one when browsing them, as you will see all the same files and folders in both.

sparky.2002

If safe mode boots OK, open a command prompt window and type chkdsk /r this will recover any unreadable sectors on the harddrive. Reboot, pressing f8 repeatedly, select 'last known good configuration ' - that should sort it

sparky.2002

If safe mode boots OK, open a command prompt window and type chkdsk /r this will recover any unreadable sectors on the harddrive. Reboot, pressing f8 repeatedly, select 'last known good configuration ' - that should sort it

markos1963

Thankfully all the stuff I wanted I saved to CD before this happened. Didn't realise it was F8 for safe mode so will give that a try before swapping HDs over, thanks for that.

fossyant

Sounds like the problems I get from my sister-in-law's pc.

The kids (teens) screw it up. Knackered the Master Boot Record once, that got part way and crashed. Managed to sort it via the web for the correct route (nearly zapped it clean) and got it going, and found thousands of virus signatures.

Some months later, it booted, but kept re-booting - again, new virus issues, got into safe mode this time.

This has been about the 6th/7th time I've fixed it, so went mental (ish) so SIL has password locked her pc. File sharing sites when the kids didn't know what they were doing was the case.