OK, I’m turning to the SDMB on this one; you guys always seem to come through inn the clutch.
Here’s exactly what happened:I was using the theater feature of Kazaa
and then my computer started making a weird ‘wokka wokka’ kind of
sound (no, the face of Fozzie the Bear did not show up on the screen!) and became unresponsive.I rebooted and the sound came back, and
got the following message at the top of the screen twice:'operating
system not found.'I used the Noron Emergency boot disks and so forth,
and even then it was telling me that drive C: was not accessible,
please make sure that drive C: is ready.I then used a standard Win98
boot disk and at the A: prompt was able to switch to drive C: and
typed dir, which showed only a few files, no windows directory at
all. No matter what I tried with the Norton rescue disks (including
unerase) or the Win98 boot disk, I couldn’t get Windows to start in
any kind of mode. The ‘wokka wokka wokka’ sound happens whenever I
try to start the computer, and stops when it reads the floppy drive.
Is this a virus or a different kind of hardware failure? Is my C:
drive wiped out now,or what?I have restore CD-ROMs for my computer,
but they wipe all info, and I’m not sure whether I should go ahead
and do that yet or not. I’ve read that this could be a hardware problem, like a CMOS battery being dead or weak (the computer is over 3 years old) or a hard disk controller failing…what do you guys think?
First of all… let me compliment you on an excellent post asking for help. Lots of information answering a lot of the basic questions so we can eliminate several possibilities right off the bat.
Questions that I have reading your post…
Have you had any trouble with your machine in the time leading up to this?
Do you have and regularly use anti-virus software?
How long have you let it just sit before attempting to access things again?
Are you comfortable poking around in your machine’s inards? If so, have you gone in and checked for lose connections or things that visually look wrong?
What’s your financial situation (i.e. how much cash are you willing to spend to fix this)
How important is the stuff on your hard drive that you don’t have back ups of? (i.e… how much effort are you willing to expend to fix this?)
So far nothing you’ve said prompts me to say “Oh, it’s XXX and you should do YYY” but hopefully additional diagnostics will help figure out what’s wrong and what you should do.
I can get a DOS prompt from the bootable floppy, with an A: prompt.
I tried FDISK/MBR and SCANREG/RESTORE and sys C: and ultimately ALL attempts to copy info to the C: drive ends up giving me an error message saying either that there was an error writing to C: or that C: cannot be found.
If your harddrive is not detected by the BIOS and you have checked that all cables are properly connected to it (IDE Interface both connections to the MOBO and the drive, Power Supply and the Master/Slave/CS jumpers) and it still does’nt work, Before you do anything try this to revive the drive just to backup the data, this drive is risky to keep on using. Turn off the PC, take the drive out, place it on its face on a table. Lift it up an inch or two - and give it a sudden horizontal jerk. Do this a few times (sometimes this frees up the stuck heads).
As you might imagine, from what you’ve posted, things are looking pretty grim, so I have two suggestions.
If you are comfortable doing so, take your hard drive out, and talk a friend into letting you try and mount it as an alternative drive in their machine. If that machine can recognize the drive and see it properly, back everything up that you haven’t and start shopping for a new CPU.
If that doesn’t work, try Andy’s method of unsticking stuck heads and try again.
Since you’re listed as being a fellow Minnesotan, If you’re willing to invest in the bench charge and you’re near the Twin Cities, call the Geek Squad on Monday and let them have a crack at it.
(I’ve had tremendous good luck with the Geek Squad, though my last experience with them was 3 years ago, so YMMV)
Or if the more you deal with this the less you want to continue dealing with this, use this as the most valid excuse to go get yourself a new machine.
If you still can’t get the drive working, take careful note of the model and serial number if you decide to remove it from the case. Hard drives typically have a 3-year warranty and if you go to the manufacturer’s website and get an RMA number, you can replace the drive for no more expense than shipping it back to the manufacturer. I’ve done this a few times and there was never any hassle, beyond being without a hard drive for a week to ten days.
It definitely sounds like a hard drive problem. You should try running diagnostic software from the drive’s manufacturer.
The following can all be downloaded for free:
I’ll have to try to get some of those tools for data recovery; thanks to all who have responded.
I tried the ‘shake’ and I tried replacing the CMOS battery; nothing doing. Entering setup at startup shows that the HD is nowhere to be found. The virtual Fozzie Bear noise still mocks me from inside of the case.
What a friggin’ bummer. So I guess my next question is: What PC manufacturers, in your opinion, make the best quality systems? I’d be looking at spending hopefully no more than $2500. Thanks to anyone who can give suggestions!
Here’s some other methods I’ve used to revive a dead HD (since it sounds like you’ve got nothing to lose with your old one now).
Drop it on a flat surface, starting at 1 inch, then going higher if it won’t spin up. My record is 2 feet and got a working hard drive for a little while.
Rap it sharply where the platter spindle should be (you’ll have to guesstimate) with something rounded, like the handle of a screwdriver. Try a couple of times.
Put it in an airtight baggie and freeze it. No kidding. For about 24 hours as cold as you can get it . Then immediately plug it in.
Make sure you’ve got another HD installed to copy everything to in case it starts spinning up and your BIOS recognizes it. Boot with a DOS floppy with Ghost on it (should come with Systemworks) and start the imaging process as fast as you can before it dies again.
BTW, is the HD spinning when powered on? Put your ear up to it and you should hear a whine if it spins up. If it does spin up but all your data seems trashed, I’ve used Lost & Found made by Powerquest to completely recover the contents of a HD with a corrupted FAT. They don’t sell it anymore but a retailer might still have it for sale. IIRC it was about $24.95.
You don’t really need a new system, just a new HD. But if you really want the best pre-made PC’s, check out www.falcon-nw.com. They’re not the cheapest by a long shot, but they use only the best hardware and burn test them quite thoroughly. If you want to go cheap but mainstream, I’d have to say Dell, if only for the customer support but even that has been lacking lately. I would definitely shy away from a Compaq or HP product as with the merger aftermath I’m not so sure they’ve got their sh*t together.
Uuuhhh, try those methods in the reverse order I listed them in. The first method is the most potentially damaging.
Also, if you’re comfortable with the insides of your PC, you can just cannibalize the parts you need and buy a bare-bones system (case, p/s, motherboard, memory and cpu). I’m assuming your monitor and printer (and other external peripherals) are okay, and you should be able to reuse the video card, modem, NIC, and sound card unless they are integrated to the motherboard of your Compaq. I made myself a spankin’ system for under $600 this way.