Has my hard drive died???

[JuliaA]

(I'm putting this on the windows forum, since I don't know whether I have a hardware or a software problem).

Please can anybody advise? My laptop started making a scratching noise from the left side. Then I had a "blue screen" message to say that it was closing down. Since then I've not been able to boot it - I get the message:

"For Realtek RTL 8110/8169 Series gigabit ethernet controller v1.10 (040718).
PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXERom
Reboot and select proper boot device, or insert boot media in selected boot devices and press a key"

I tried putting a cd in the drive, but that didn't make any difference. I looked at the BIOS (not that I'm experienced at such things) and it showed the first boot drive as the hard drive.

I'm running Windows Home.  My laptop is a Rock Pegasus 650, with 100gb hard drive (720rpm)

Grateful for any suggestions

Julia A

[GX1_Man]

It did not find a usable boot device, so either the drive has dies or there are problems with it's connection on the motherboard. Is the machine still under warranty? If so, I would contact them. I've never heard of that brand. How old is it?

I would personally boot a Linux LiveCD to see if the hard drive can be read and back up any data if it can be that you need. If that doesn't work, you  know for sure it is hardware. You can download the file on a working machine and burn it as an ISO with Nero, etc. and then boot with it. It will not write any files to the hard drive and is a great test.

http://www.slax.org/download.php


A hard drive can be replaced on a laptop, but not just any drive will do, and if that isn't the only problem, that is no solution.

[Nitro]

Found this : http://www.rockdirect.com/notebooks/pegasus650_cons.htm

If its got a 3 year collect and return warranty then thats alright!, Looks a nice laptop BTW.

[GX1_Man]

I'm leery of any off brand laptop, but a 3 year warranty would definitely make me feel less anxious about it. We'll see if they can come through.

[JuliaA]

Many thanks for your responses.  Yes, Rock are a reputable UK laptop manufacturer; I contacted them on Saturday and they are sending me a new hard disk.  They also said that it might be the motherboard, in which case the laptop will have to be sent back for repair.

I was interested in what you said, GX1_Man, about using Linux to possibly recover some of the data on the hard drive. I'd assumed that I'd lost it all (fortunately most of my data is backed up to an external drive, but there are programs that I'd like to be able to access if possible).  I don't know the first thing about Linux, or Slax, so would be grateful for any step by step guidance on what I need to do.

[GX1_Man]

Burn the CD with it and boot the machine just to play around and experiment. No files are written to the hard disk just by running the operating system and it's applications from the CD. You can save files if it is FAT32 on the hard drive. If you are concerned about your hard drive/data while using a Linux Live CD, you can just unhook it!