Is my hard drive fried?

[gazskiman]

When I turn my computer on it begins its startup up but only gets to the point where the logo for the motherboard is displayed on the monitor and stops there, there are no error messages and the logo screen remains on the monitor. I have no keyboard  or mouse functions. I have placed cd's in drives and those drives appear to operate normally but no changes occur on the monitor screen. I strongly suspect that my hard drive has died, but would like some verification. One other thing, when I do first start up the computer their is a noice that I would best describe as a high speed grinding noise, which eventually stops after about a minute. I had been hearing this noise for a little while, but did not pay it much mind since it stopped after a short time and the computer seemed to be operating fine. My system has several cooling fans so I thought it might have been one of those. Any advice or help that can be provided would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[GX1_Man]

The grinding noise sounds bad. We just have to guess since you didn't list your computer specs, but:

If you haven't done anything physically to the computer
The noise has been present for a while
It suddenly got worse and you couldn't boot

It sounds like dead hard drive.

You could try booting with a live LInux CD and see if it can read your drive. If it is some other hardware error, you may be able to pick that up as well.A functioning hard drive is NOT required for a Live CD.

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/distro.php?distro=58

Download and burn the ISO to a blank CDR at a low speed. Put it in the CDROM drive and restart computer.

[pcdoc4christ]

gazskiman:

Yeah, grinding noise = hard drive grinding to a halt.

To recover files from the drive, don't try to boot to it any longer, but remove it from the computer and put it in a sealed plastic bag in the freezer over night.

Install a new hard drive in the computer and install Windows on it.

Take the hard drive out of the freezer and connect it as a slave on the same IDE cable with the new hard drive.

Boot to Windows and browse to the other hard drive to move your files to the new hard drive before the old hard drive grinds to a halt again.


Let us know how it works out,
Doc

[gazskiman]

It sounds like dead hard drive.

You could try booting with a live LInux CD and see if it can read your drive. If it is some other hardware error, you may be able to pick that up as well.A functioning hard drive is NOT required for a Live CD.

***********
Thanks for the advice and link. I'll try it and see what happens. It just seems weird thatthere's no error message occuring and that the logo for the motherboard comes up and then nothing else happens. It almost seems to me like the system is waiting for instructions but isn't getting them.

[GX1_Man]

It is waiting for something to boot from. There is no floppy or CDROM and the hard drive is not available.

Let us know how the LIVE CD goes.

[Fed]

As we are having a guessing competition I'll have a go:D

The noise is a fan and unrelated. Stick some plastic tubing in your ear & see if you can find where it's coming from.

Shut completely down & pull out it's battery for 10 minutes, re-insert & re-boot.

[Frankie]

Your Hard drive might be bad, but the grinding noise might be your psu fan.

Disconnect your hard drive, now do you hear any grinding and do you get any error messages onscreen.

[pcdoc4christ]

As we are having a guessing competition I'll have a go:D

The noise is a fan and unrelated. ...

I'll see your processor fan and raise you two IDE drives!