Blue screen of death

[MKT]

Arrrrrgh!

My trusty lap top, which has given me 6 years of hard service, traveled well over 100,000 miles and kept me in touch with the world when I worked the northern border gave up the ghost unexpectedly yesterday. Everything working fine at noon, but by 3pm the desktop tuned blue and gave me some fatal kernal error message followed by the caveat of "if this is the first time you experienced this error, reboot and strike F8 for safe-mode".

Well, I did just as the message suggested and upon rebooting I got a new black screen of ooops "no hard drive found". No way to boot in safe-mode, no way to access my hard drive and retrieve any of my documents. Fortunately for me, my brother-in-law recently had a hard crash which prompted me to start backing things up. Too bad I didn't get the job done.

Fortunately we have a desktop computer, which will have to suffice until I can get a new lap-top delivered (already ordered). I will search for my boot disk and see if I can get into my hard drive but the computer geek at the office seems to think that is very unlikely as it sounds to him like the hard drive may have seized.

Oh well, I just needed to vent.

 

[Bob R]

You could try this:

Ultimate Boot CD - Download the UBCD

bob

 

[MKT]

I might give that a try Bob, but I don't have high expectations. I did locate my XP repair disk and got it loaded in the cd tray. The compyter spooled up and asked if I wanted to reload or repair, I tried repair first and promptly got the message that there was no hard drive attached to the computer. Same message when I tried to load anew.

The drive is toast, otherwise I would expect a message that the OS was missing not the drive. I can F2 and get to the set-up data and through the 6 pages I can see everything except the primary drive, it simply no longer exists.

I cracked the case tonight and took a look at the drive just to see if there were any external signs (blackening, burns, etc) of damage. Nothing to see other than the housing. I can spin what I believe is the hard drive cooling fan and it turns freely.

I'll download the program and give it a try later tonight.

 

[41collector]

Could be stiction

There was a problem with disk drives a few years back called stiction, where the heads would stick to the platter. Usually occurred after the disk had spun down, either from a power off or idle time.

You can flip the disk like a frisbee, just DO NOT turn loose of it. I've had some success getting the disk back up and running long enough to get a backup.

Worth a try...

 

[m1gunner]

There was a problem with disk drives a few years back called stiction, where the heads would stick to the platter. Usually occurred after the disk had spun down, either from a power off or idle time.

You can flip the disk like a frisbee, just DO NOT turn loose of it. I've had some success getting the disk back up and running long enough to get a backup.

Worth a try...

It is NFG as is, how much worse can the HD get? If the "frisbee flip" doesn't work, try some shock therapy. Start small, after a while it will cease to be therapy for the disk, and start to become therapy for you.

 

[FrankD45]

When my PC got fried it was the cooling fan, which was mounted over the processor, which broke loose and caused the hard drive to stop. It was not cost effective to replace the mother board so I bought something called "R-Driver. It is a USB 2.0 to SATA IDE CABLE rig that allows you to remove your HD, power it up, and connect it to your new machine.

I think it cost about $20 and worked like a charm.

I hope that helps,

Frank

 

[LouisianaJoe]

You can buy a USB enclosure that will allow you to plug your drive into another PC as an external drive assuming that the drive just trashed the OS and not the data. You will need to determine the size and interface to get the correct enclosure. This can be determined by removing the drive from the pc and getting the specs from the manufacturer web site. What I mean by interface is IDE, SATA and others. the specs should show this.

I have purchased them here: Hard Drive Enclosure, External Hard Drive Enclosures, Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure at TigerDirect.com

 

[MKT]

Thanks for the tips on trying to retrieve my data. In between yanking the hard drive and shaking, gently thumping and shaking some more, in the attempt to get it spinning (no joy) I did do a little surfing. I saw the adapters that Frank and Joe mentioned. For $20 or so it might be worth a shot.

I think I may also have figured out what happened. The drive carrier also sports the PCI card slot and my wieless connection is via the PCI. I don't know if it was be design or simply not thought of, but the PCI slot is directly below the drive. Never thought about the fcat that the card gets warm until I realized where it was sitting. The heat from the wireless card is being transferred directly to the hard drive. I'll venture a guess that the rising heat may have had a little to do with the failure. I also noted in my surfing tonight that most of the hard drive replacements only have an expected service life of about 5 years. If I got 6 out of this one while slowly cooking it I did pretty good.

Once I am up and running with the new system I will attempt a little organ transplant and see if I can get the old lap top up and running for the kids to abuse.

 

[srgvaz]

If you buy the adapter or enclosure make sure it's the IDE and not the SATA interface. Six years was great your new laptop will not last as long since the solder used in today's world contains less silver than before. Buy the extended warranty if you can it is well worth it these days. If you ask me I would say it's dead and you should of backed up your files on a flash drive or disc.
-great start to the new year-

 

[cmort666]

1. Get into your laptop's BIOS settings and make sure that they're correct. If your CMOS battery is dead, the machine will lose all BIOS settings every time you turn it off. That includes hard drive configuration. If you get into the BIOS, are able to discover the hard drive and it boots normally on restart, that means the CMOS battery is bad. A trivial and trivially inexpensive fix.

2. Before you buy anything to read the hard drive, make sure that the cables are firmly attached. If you've been toting it around for six years, the data cable might have finally worked it's way off.

 

[LouisianaJoe]

I am a software developer, so it it critical that I not lose any files. I have 2 external USB drives and I maintain 2 backups of everything important to me such as customer files, photos, documents and other stuff. I use a program called SyncBackSE from 2BrightSparks: File Backup and Utility Software to maintain my backups. What it does is backup everything the first time that you run it then only files that changed when you run it again. You can set up jobs that back up specific stuff. I have a job for photos and others for each customer. The program costs $30 and I consider it well worth it. You can try it for free to see if it will work for you. I actually had a backup drive fail and that is why I now have 2.

 

[MKT]

Cmort,

The CMOS battery is fine. The date and time are correct (within second of my satellite watch) and the setting changes hold after a shut down. The only thing that doesnt register is the primary drive, what I get on that line is "not found".

I have checked all of the cables but I will double check them again, perhaps tomorrow night after work. It took a little bit to figure out how to completely disassemble my lap top. Wouldn't you know, Dell cleverly hid several screws - two under the hinged portion of the flip up screen and one under the keyboard. On reflection, I might be able to access the HD ribbon cable by only pulling the keyboard.

 

[Bassamatic]

Can't complain getting six years out of a hard drive. I've never had one that lasted that long with daily use. You will probably find it's more cost effective to just get another lap top. In the computer world, a six year old machine is an anchor.

 

[cmort666]

Cmort,

The CMOS battery is fine. The date and time are correct (within second of my satellite watch) and the setting changes hold after a shut down. The only thing that doesnt register is the primary drive, what I get on that line is "not found".

I have checked all of the cables but I will double check them again, perhaps tomorrow night after work. It took a little bit to figure out how to completely disassemble my lap top. Wouldn't you know, Dell cleverly hid several screws - two under the hinged portion of the flip up screen and one under the keyboard. On reflection, I might be able to access the HD ribbon cable by only pulling the keyboard.

I take it the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive when you try to discover it.

That sounds like either a mechanical or a circuit board failure on the drive. Can you hear the drive spin up?

Last year I saved most of a friend's data from his desktop by swapping circuit boards between his "dead" drive and several of mine from the same model drives. Although the drives were all the same, the boards were different. I managed to find one that fit and was able to save his data. This technique is of course contingent upon you being able to locate a similar drive, something probably not that hard to do on Ebay.

 

[MKT]

Thanks for that tip Cmort. I might give the HD board swap a try, provided I can find the right one. If the fleabay HD seller would post shots of the actual drive it would be less of a crap shoot.

My new computer arrived the other day but between working late and having a few peripheral issues (non-compatability with Windows 7) I haven't had a chance to log in for a couple nights. I will get the old lap top running again, maybe I'll even be able to retrieve my data.

Now to try and play a little reading catch up.

 

[cmort666]

Thanks for that tip Cmort. I might give the HD board swap a try, provided I can find the right one. If the fleabay HD seller would post shots of the actual drive it would be less of a crap shoot.

My new computer arrived the other day but between working late and having a few peripheral issues (non-compatability with Windows 7) I haven't had a chance to log in for a couple nights. I will get the old lap top running again, maybe I'll even be able to retrieve my data.

Now to try and play a little reading catch up.

Here's a relatively inexpensive intermediate step:

Buy yourself an 2.5" external IDE to USB drive carrier. They usually run between $20 and $30. Follow the instructions on setting up and using it. Attach the drive, but don't put the drive in the carrier. If you can read the drive, it was a problem with the laptop and you're done. Transfer your data to the new computer. If not, see if the drive is spinning up. If it's not, you can try the technique of rotating the drive in your hand. If that doesn't work, you can proceed to the board swap.

If you need to swap boards. Take off the existing board and record ALL model and part numbers. If you can get the seller to send you a picture of the board, you can compare the shape, screw holes, etc. side by side.

In order to take the board off, you may have to hunt around for a torx driver small enough to remove the screws, if that's what is used. I got a set at Home Depot.

 

[tyusclan]

Just had the same thing happen a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, my SIL is a systems engineer and was able to save my documents and photos. That was all that was really important anyway.

I got two of those screens before it actually crashed, and I had tried to back it up. For some reason the CD-Rom wouldn't open so I could get a disk in.