PC problems (need the pro's)

[shardian]

I got a pc from work in which the power supply blew up. I replaced the power supply and booted the system. It booted fine, but after the windows load bar left and windows desktop is supposed to pop up, the pc reboots. I tried booting from an xp cd and jut starting fresh, but that also stalls out and reboots when it gets ready to install. I reseated the IDE connectors, power connectors, and tried multiple configurations of the RAM. At one point with one stick of ram in slot one, the pc did get a bit further. I was actually able to format the drive using the xp disc, but when it finished and started the xp install, it rebooted again.

Now the weird part:
I decided to take the HD ( which is a 30gb WD caviar - I know are unreliable crap) and put in my home pc as a slave drive. Windows started, and I scheduled a complete scan for the suspect drive. It scanned and showed good. Then the pc rebooted and while I wasn't paying attention it started the scan again. Anyways, it probably scanned 3 times. I finally came back in and there was some error showing during the boot up. I figured that meant the suspect drive failed, so I shut down, removed the bad HD, and rebooted the home pc. Guess what? Now the home PC does the EXACT same reboot at windows start thing!!! I have no frikkin clue what to do now. What could a bad (formatted, I might add, with only xp install files loaded)drive have done to my PC to cause this reboot issue??

I'd be more than happy to reward whomever is able to help me.

And yes, I have tried safe mode, safe w/ command prompt, last known Good config, etc. ANytime either pc even sniffs windows, it restarts.

[ChadTower]

In the home PC, is there anything connected to the IDE channel you scanned the WD drive on?

BTW, I've had quite a few WD Caviar drives over the years, and have never had one fail.  Never put suspect parts into a machine you can't afford to lose.  Keep an old motherboard around for that so you can whip a test machine together on your bench when you need it.  I keep an old ~P400 range motherboard around for that purpose.

[shardian]

A CD Burner. I'll try puling it.

[ChadTower]

My first thought is that the drive is what killed the initial PC by damaging that IDE channel, and when you booted it in your home PC, it did the same there.  Hopefully it didn't fry the IDE controller as a whole.

Toss that hard drive into the trash.  Save the jumper - I can never find one of those when I need one.

[shardian]

unplugging the burner did nothing. I've never heard of a "working" HD frying a mobo. I downloaded the ultimate boot disk thing I found on the net. I'm gonna try running a few of the tools on there.

[ChadTower]

unplugging the burner did nothing. I've never heard of a "working" HD frying a mobo.

You had a problem in a PC... so you took the hard drive out and put it into a known good PC... and now the other PC has the same problem as the first PC.

There is only one common link.  The hard drive.  It took a bit of time to damage the home mobo but I can't think of any other possible cause of the behaviour moving to the home PC.

[xar256]

Kinda sounds like the hard drive's controller board got fried by the bad power supply.  It happens. 

One thing I like to try when stuff like that happens (so long as the system keep recognizing the drive) change the drive from master/slave to cable select of vice versa.  It can make a difference sometimes.

Otherwise, pull of what data you can off it, and chuck it. 

That would be my plan of attack.

[ChadTower]

Oh yeah, duh, I glossed on the original power supply blowing up.  It would have done the damage to the drive, which probably did the damage to the mobo, which now did the same damage to his mobo.

[shardian]

yeah but what is with the reboot as soon as windows tries to come up?

[ChadTower]

IDE controller.  Try it with a boot device that isn't windows based to be sure.

[shardian]

If the IDE was fried, why would the computer recognize everything on boot up? I am pretty sure I would get an IDE error on power up. I've seen a few dead hard drives in my day, and they've never acted like this.

[ChadTower]

If it's just damaged somehow there is no way to know what it may or may not do.  Clearly it's not dead.  I can't think of any other reason the problem would persist after you took the WD drive out.  The only two things that WD drive would be in line to damage would be the IDE controller/channel or the power supply.

Double check to see if you didn't accidentally bend over any pins on the IDE connector on any of the devices you've touched, or maybe something small fell into it and is shorting a couple of pins.

[grantspain]

i had a real similar problem with a friends pc,found a dead psu
i replaced the psu and it would just make it to windows then reset.
tried a reinstall but only made it worse.
tried another hd,same problem
tried a new mobo,got it running but then locked up at disc loading
disconnected the cdrw drive-bingo
i tried backtracking the fault and found the mobo,hd and cd were all faulty-common being the ide
strange problem for sure,i could only put it down to a mains power surge(storm strike) or a fatal output voltage spike on the +12 or +5

[shardian]

Wow, this sucks big time. I would have NEVER thought that HD could have fried a mobo.

The HD was installed on the secondary IDE. I took out the whole secondary IDE cable and even disabled the secondary IDE in BIOS. Still the same prob. The HD and the dvd burner set up on the Primary work fine when I use the Ultimate Boot disc. I suppose I am just ---fouled up beyond all recognition--- unless someone posts a "miracle cure".

[knave]

A few of the PC's at work showed the same symptoms.  The problem was a bad HD. I was able to use system restore to replace some key files on the HD.  This worked for a week and then same problem. (rebooting due to corrupt files) I didn't bother fixing it again...we swapped to a brand new "maxtor" HD and it was fine.

A second PC with the same Rebooting...It was the powersupply as well as the HD.

While I think it'spossible that the old drive damaged your motherboard, I think it's too early to tell.  I'd say first it's time for lots of tests.

If I had those PC's in front of me, I'd try the following:

1. See if it will boot from a floppy. (I keep stacks of win98 boot disks for this reason)
I also have made a bunch of win98 boot CD's that emulate a floppy for newer PC's.

2. Try to boot from a Linux live CD. Ubuntu would work great. If it boots try to browse the HD. If it doesn't boot disconnect all other IDE drives save the CD/DVD ROM and try again. If it boots then it's likely your home drive has failed as well.

2. Get a new HD (or a used one if you feel lucky) and try to install windows. Be sure to check in your bios if the drive is being recognized.

My gut is that both drives are now dead or corrupted.  You may be able to save files off of them.

In the event that it is indeed a hardware issue, I'd make sure the ram is good and then the powersupply.  I would find it odd if the old HD really damaged your Home PC's Mobo.
But with computers anything is possible...meaning test everything before you discount it.

Good luck and let us know.

[Singapura]

It's unlikely that the HD has affected your MB unless there's a short somewhere and then it could burn out the IDE controller which would mean no bootup at all. It's also unlikely that a hardware failure would somehow "transfer" to a good drive.  Because you're faulty computer's behavior is now displayed by your "good" one, it might be a virus. Scan thoroughly before continuing. Did you by any chance use the IDE cable from the "broken" drive and when you put in the old drive in the working computer, you left that in? I've had quite a few harddisks fail because of a faulty IDE cable, so you might want to replace it just to be sure. If that's not the case, try the harddisk from the working computer in the faulty one. Does it boot up and work okay? If so then at least there's nothing wrong with the MB or the rest of the stuff.  If it still reboots it's most probably the PSU. Check if it's heavy enough to power your equipment. I had rebooting problems when I put in a new graphics card because my PSU was only 250W. With a new 450W or better a 600W you're set for a long time. If you're PSU is only barely pulling the cart, you might have overloaded the PSU in your "good" computer, thus making it have the same symptoms.

[shardian]

These are both older pc's. The one from work is a PIII 850mhz. The home pc is an AMD Duron 1.2 mhz. On the home computer, the RAM passed all tests. The hard drive showed 53 defects according to the boot disc. I can't find my xp disc for the home pc.

I doubt it is the PSU in either one. The PSU that blew up was original and 250W. I replaced it with a 300W. The home PC also has a 300W. Don't think it is a virus, as I formatted the bad PC's HD before I put it in the home PC.

I didn't swap any cables at all from pc to pc.

I figured I would also restate this: Right after I put the bad pc's WD HD in the home computer, it booted just fine into windows. I had to schedule the scan disk that way.

[shmokes]

I'm thinking that the Master Boot Record on the old drive became corrupt and when you put it in your desktop computer your good drive's MBR was overwritten by the one on the bad drive.  Boot into the XP CD and run the Recovery Console.  Once you've selected your windows installation and you're all the way in to the prompt type the command:

fixmbr

This will write a new master boot record to your boot partition.  Now restart.

Warning: if there is a virus present it's possible that this could make your partitions inaccessible.

Another command you might try from the Recovery Console is fixboot.  That writes new boot sector code to the boot partition in case the boot sector became currupt.  I've never used this command before, though, so I can't comment on it personally.  I have fixed a number of computers with FIXMBR, though.

[SirPeale]

You also might want to run MemTest86 on it for a few hours, see if anything bad pops up.

[D-Lew]

I was thinking something wrong with the boot sector, virus, etc... something along those lines.

[hyiu]

Have you checked the RAM ??  I had bad rams a couple of times...

it would act fine for a while, but reboot randomly... or hang the machine...
and the memory check program did NOT show problem....
(and I downloaded some freebie memory check pgrm... not just the boot memory check..)

as windows exits... it updates something... so when you put in your good HD..
there is a chance some setting is overwritten when it reboots...

[shardian]

Well, I found my xp disc. Running chkdsk shows that the home PC HD has 2 or more unrecoverable defects. I can't repair windows or anything. The HD is definitely toast. Hopefully I can at least recover some data from the pc, as it did have more than a few files on it that are important. I think I will just take it to a PC shop and see if they can rip the data from it.

[shardian]

The only thing I can think is that I just had really really bad luck and by coincidence the home HD failed too.

[D-Lew]

I'm hesitant to say try to run that hard drive as a slave or secondary on another system to see if you can recover the files...

You can take that with a grain of salt though.  If you think there are more serious problems with it, or you can move on with life without getting stuff off of there, I would just let it go.

[shardian]

well...I am prepping an old IBM 400mhz right now with TinyXP as a last ditch recovery run.

I figure if I can get a crappy old dvd burner installed and burning at SLOW speeds, and can get the pc to boot once like the home one did, I can offload the HD in one swoop. I won't miss the IBM if it gets screwed. I am kinda pissed though that I have went from having enough pc's for all my projects (several MAME, and a jukebox) to having almost no extra pc's.

I'll pick up a few small HD's this weekend and see if I can at least salvage the systems. Anyone care to donate some hard drives to my cause?

[shardian]

Popped old IBM 5 gb HD into home pc and installed tiny xp no problem. I now have the "dead" home HD Installed on the secondary IDE, and I have full access to it. Working on getting everything together and burning a backup disc.

[shardian]

Uh Oh. For some reason, the "My Pictures" folder is...well...gone. I have looked over the whole mother ---smurfing--- disc, and the only thing missing is the only thing I truly needed. How could that whole folder be gone?!? Under recent documents, there are multiple links to former folders under my pictures, but they all show as no longer valid. I am really starting to HATE computers.

Anyone know of a good data recovery software?

[ChadTower]

Use the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.  They'll come in an ISO you burn to a boot CD.

[shardian]

Use the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.  They'll come in an ISO you burn to a boot CD.

The Maxtor tools didn't work.

Anyways, I "acquired" some data recovery software last night. I did a deep scan for any and all picture files, and it appears it found alot of the pics from an initial inspection I did before work this morning. It renames everything though, so I have to wade thru thousands of thumbnails to dig out the good stuff. I did notice more than a few corrupt files that are gone unfortunately.
I backed everything up to the 5 gb drive I put in the pc, and I am not shutting the pc down until I pull all of that backup off tonight.

[ChadTower]

The Maxtor tools didn't work.

The Maxtor tools suck.  Did you use the old ones that Maxtor used to include with their drives or the ones that are currently available from Seagate (Seagate owns Maxtor now)?  The Seagate tools are much better - I just used them a couple of weeks ago on a 300G and an 80G drive.  Both were dead - it brought one of them back.

[shardian]

I've ran several tools on that drive, and they all basically say the drive is severely corrupt in more than one location. I doubt any more tools would make that any better. My only guess is that when I put the suspect drive in and scandisk ran several times, the reboots after it was done must have resulted in physical damage in the home HD. It's the only thing I can come up with.

[ChadTower]

What does "corrupt" mean here?  Corrupt is a file system concept.  Do you mean it has dead and nonrepairable sectors?

[shardian]

What does "corrupt" mean here?  Corrupt is a file system concept.  Do you mean it has dead and nonrepairable sectors?

The word I would use is "defect", but yes all progs I've ran say unrepairable and/or freak out when it hits one of those spots. There are NUMEROUS errors on the disc, but a handful are in the "Haha, your ---fouled up beyond all recognition---!" category.

[ChadTower]

Ah.  Any news on the home mobo?  Trashed?

[shardian]

Ah.  Any news on the home mobo?  Trashed?

??

It is the one I am recovering AND the one that is unrecoverable in a "get it running and booting windows". Just because a HD is corrupt doesn't mean you can't get data off of it. The drive can be non-responsive and data recovery software can access and recover from it. I was able to recover some data from a thoroughly screwed flash drive one time with Data Recovery Doctor.

It is some pretty darn neat software.

As to the "suspect" drive from the work pc? It is being trashed. There is nothing on it anyways.

[ChadTower]

Mobo = motherboard.

You have not yet said whether or not the home motherboard is actually damaged.

[shardian]

Oh duh...

The home mobo is fine. It is up and running right now with the 5gb HD as the brains right now. I haven't restarted it since I put in the bad HD though, so after I finish offloading the backups, we'll see if it was definitely just a stroke of odd timed bad luck.

[ChadTower]

That is really, really, tremendously weird.  I just can't buy that your home HD died at the exact time you put in a damaged HD by coincendence.

When you put the work HD into your home system were they on the same IDE cable?

Did you move the home HD at all while the platter was spinning?

[shardian]

That is really, really, tremendously weird.  I just can't buy that your home HD died at the exact time you put in a damaged HD by coincendence.

When you put the work HD into your home system were they on the same IDE cable?

No. The work HD was installed on the secondary IDE, as a precaution in the 1st place. They did not even interact, and it was formatted with only the XP install files on it. This is by far the weirdest pc problem I've ever messed with.

[MadGamer]

I always use fdisk when formatting before installing any windows software no viruses can survive. Then theres no doubt.