My Brothers HDD, Help Needed

martin9887 · 17 Aug 2007 at 17:13

Ok, he started getting a boot error,

'A disk error has occurred, to restart press ctrl-alt-del'.

I first tried just restarting just to see if it would work, sometimes it would but then it would freeze on Windows loading screen or on desktop. Just went back to the same error all the time though mostly.

I've done 'chkdsk' but it froze up on stage 4 at 72%, tried it 3 times now but still doesn't complete.

I tried getting to recovery console to run 'fixmbr' command but that freezes as well, either during 1st Windows setup stage or after I press 'R' to access it, every time I try it does this. I tried to just format the drive but that froze as soon I selected to install Windows to try and format it.

I've updated the bios and reset to defaults, no change.

I just tried running DBAN to wipe the drive but wouldn't complete, it said it's usually caused by bad sectors so I'm thinking the drive is ******.

Just an endless amount of lock-ups and blank screens.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks.

EDIT: I've also done Memtest which found no errors after 2 hours of running.

semi-pro waster · 17 Aug 2007 at 17:44

The only other things I could suggest to try are a) using different cables(and/or ports) and b) try the hard drive in another computer. Other than that I think it probably is shafted unfortunately.

martin9887 · 17 Aug 2007 at 18:13

semi-pro waster said:
The only other things I could suggest to try are a) using different cables(and/or ports) and b) try the hard drive in another computer. Other than that I think it probably is shafted unfortunately.

Set it in another port and new cable, it's formatting now so that's a good sign.

Thank you.

Why I didn't try that before is beyond me, caught up in the confusion I guess

.

semi-pro waster · 17 Aug 2007 at 18:24

Technically you'd have been better changing one thing at a time to see which was causing the problem but I can understand why you didn't. Sometimes it is just nice to get it working again so I hope this sorts it for good.

martin9887 · 17 Aug 2007 at 18:53

semi-pro waster said:
Technically you'd have been better changing one thing at a time to see which was causing the problem but I can understand why you didn't. Sometimes it is just nice to get it working again so I hope this sorts it for good.

Yeah I know, I did start to do that at first but thought what the hell, it's an old PC getting replaced in a month or two anyway.