HardDrive failure or something else?

[scooterpickleman]

Ok so last night I turned my dad's computer on to a do a bit of gaming. Well first thing I notice was it was making a strange sound like grrrr durrrr ummm like a grinding sound almost. Well when I clicked on my account it froze up  and the grinding sound quit suddenly. When I restarted the computer it said something like Boot failure or something and said to insert the boot disk and press enter. Well my dad tried to fix it today he inserted the disc I guess and tried to do a system restore. The computer said it wasn't possible though because no hard drive was found. Now I'm guessing it's pretty obvious what happened. I think the hard drive has failed, but I'm not positive are there any other possibilities.

Specs:
Pentium D not sure on the speed prolly like 3.0ghz
1 gig of ram
Windows Xp Media Center or whatever that one is lol
Srry I'm not quite sure on his specs I just wanted to use his 42 inch tv for some games lol.

[honvetops]

it sounds like a failure, if possible and can get back in retrieve anything valuable  and save it..
 time to go shopping on a new one......

if unable to get back in,  one of our smarter members will answer here a little later on possible ways to get your info off the bad drive......

[scooterpickleman]

theres really nothing important on the hard drive we dont mind just trashing it

[honvetops]

i am by no means bragging or trying to sell anything here on Nathans forum but, you can't beat the price on the seagate 320 gig hard drives right now...

best value on the web  by far*   read reviews and they are not hard to replace,  we can help you*   

[DeltaSlaya]

i am by no means bragging or trying to sell anything here on Nathans forum but, you can't beat the price on the seagate 320 gig hard drives right now...

best value on the web  by far*   read reviews and they are not hard to replace,  we can help you*   

Yea I got that one and I can highly recommend it. In my currency it boiled down to just over 50c a gB. I got the SATA-II edition though there is a 'normal', or older ATA/IDE available for the same price.

[honvetops]

my third is inoperative, i sent it back to seagate for a replacement.  still satisfied with them though~

[patio]

theres really nothing important on the hard drive we dont mind just trashing it

Even if this is the case i would still hook it up as a slave in another machine and retrieve whaever data you want.
Then go to the drive manuf. site and DLoad and run the diagnostics on that HDD to make sure it is the culprit....the noises you described could be a number of things including bu tnot limited to the vid card fan; CPU fan or even a PSU failure.

Best to know what it is before pulling the wallet out.

[scooterpickleman]

ok my dad already purchased a new hard drive but he said its like not booting or something i dont know i havent looked at it his restore cd isnt booting up right or something im not sure any ideas?

[patio]

You cannot just add a new hard drive and expect the machine to boot...

Let's start  with the basics.

We know it's a Pentium
We know it has 1G of RAM
And we know it's running Media Center.

What we don't know:
How did you hook up the drives ? ?
Are you getting any error messages on startup ? ?
What type of restore CD does he have ? ?
The machine will not boot with the CD ? ?

Much more pertinent info is going to be needed here...

[truenorth]

Scooterpickleman, Your post is a nostalgia trip for me as I have been there a few times over the years. Here are a couple of suggestions that have solved it for me in the past 9at least temporarily). However 1st let me suggest that Patio is giving you excellent counsel re trying to determine (if you can) the actual cause of the problem. However to jump ahead and assume that it does turn out to be a HDD problem. !. remove the drive and put it in a freezer overnight and reinstall it and reboot and see what happens. 2. with the side of the tower removed and the computer off- you will see the end portion of the drive (the plastic part of its enclosure). Now turn on the computer and as soon as you see the computer brand logo appear tap the plastic part of the drive with your knuckle (medium force tap) –be careful not to touch any portion of the metal of the computer. Do this before the screen displaying “boot disk failure---“appears. This method has been very successful to regaining access to the HDD for me in the past. Good luck and keep us informed of the results of your efforts. truenorth

[scooterpickleman]

Ok I have an update on the problem. i myself am not personally working with this computer it is my father's. Anyways. I guess he got the hard drive to work and he is now trying to install Windows XP Home Edition. As it starts installing this message pops up.

Setup cannot copy the file relevent.mof. (the l in relevent isn't an l though its more like a rectangle I don't know how I would type it though.)

[scooterpickleman]

Continuation of the message.

Ensure that the disc labeled "Windows XP Home Edition" is in the drive selected below, or provide the location where the file can be found.

And it is trying to copy the files from I:/i386

Now I trtied to see if there were any different drives and there are not.
What do you all think?

[Deerpark]

It sounds like your CD drive is having trouble reading the XP CD. So make sure its dust and smudge free and try again. Either that or the drive can't copy to the hard drive, but the hd is brand new right?

[scooterpickleman]

yes the hard drive is brand new and this is the second time i think this has happened with a different cd since he has home edition and media center but media center wasnt working so he tried home edition

[Deerpark]

Hmm to me its sound like either a problem with the cd drive or with the cds you're using.  Have you installed windows from those cds on that computer before?