harddrive

[george]

i have a gateway computer . been having problems with the power in our house. now my cpu wont boot. turn it on and it says corrupt harddrive. what do i do now. can i fix it do i buy a new one please help

[GX1_Man]

You can always buy a new one. Whether that one can be fixed and what it takes to do so remains to be seen. Do you have any experience with working on computers? If not are you up for it? if the answer is no, then a repair shop or a new purchase is in order.

What are the specifics on the machine?

[george]

it is a gateway. 2.0ghz processor. 256 mg ram. 40 gig harddrive. usb ports front and back. cdrw,cd-rom,dvd,floppy other than that i dont remember... im taking pc repair and i am required to have a pc to work on ...if i can at least get this one to get to windows i can use it

[GX1_Man]

If it won't boot or turn on I don't see how you can get a message regarding a bad hard drive.  :-?

If you  have power, you can download free diagnostics from the manufacturer's web site.

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1122425778

If not, a start would be to try another power supply. Could you be more specific about the "doesn't power  on" issue? It sounds like you have a good computer for your class.

[george]

it will turn on but when i turn it on it immediately goes to a black screen saying corrupt harddrive
ive tried going through the bios and trying anything i can think of in the dos prompt

[GX1_Man]

Does the drive show correctly in the BIOS? Did you run the diagnostics?

[george]

when it starts up it says sorry for the inconvenience but windows did not start successfully
then i try to start in save mode dont work
try safe mode with prompt command that dont work either
ive tried the last known good config that dont work either.

if i click on start normally it will set there for like 10-15 minutes and not do anything.

i am going through the steps right now so as i can get the word for word messages it gives because i dont remember what the bios showd

i believe is said something about  s.m.a.r.t.

[GX1_Man]

if you have a S.M.A.R.T. failure message and it doesn't boot you need a new drive.  

[george]

can i down load that diagnostic software without windows running?

[george]

in bios it says
device              hard disk
vendor         wdc  wd200eb-11bhfo
size              20 gb
lba              supported
block mode   16 sectors
pio mode         4
async  dma     multi word dma-2
ultra dma           ultra dma-4
smart               supported

is there any checks or scans to run in the bios , im still new at this

[GX1_Man]

You can download it on another machine, like the one you are using now, and make a diagnostic floppy in most cases and run that on the damaged machine.

[george]

actuallly my laptop dont have a floppy drive i do have cdrom though

[GX1_Man]

See what the format of the download is and  proceed accordingly. If you must have a floppy to run from, I am sure someone will make it for you.

[george]

i also noticed when i viewed the event log in bios that it said pre boot error cmos system options not set      whatever that means

[george]

at this very moment i am running xp on my cputer. the same one that i thought i had harddrive problems with.

i dont know how but i went into the bios and changed the boot up sequence i made the harddrive not boot up at all and made the cdrom boot up first

then all of a sudden it said to hit enter to continue and then windows set up began.
i deleted the partition that was on the system fisrt. then i installed and formatted with the ntsf file system.....i hope that was the right thing to do but i just thought about trying that and it works great