I babysit a machine for friends who are pc hopeless.
it has been fine up until about a week ago.
System is a uk e-monster 750dvd. ie Amd athalon 750Mhz 196meg ram Dvd drive and a 20 gig seagate HDD. The system is about 18 months old, is running Windows ME, and is used for a home office, with no fancy config or hardware.
It began
Initially intermittent drive failure.
Bios would recognise drive but produce "Operating sytem not found" error message approx 70% of bootups.
Boot from floppy was possible at first. Ran Scandisk (thorough) inc phsical check. result ok. defragmented disk. ok. ran up to date virus check. all ok.
System then began to fail to detect Hard disk. Manually input Hard disk settings into Bios. Disk not detected. Suspected CMOS battery error. Replaced battery.
Disk would not auto detect. Manually input settings. Disk would not detect.
Disk now spins intermittantly. Checked HDD jumper settings. Checked IDE controllers. DVD drive detected in master or slave position on either controller. HDD detected on neither controller. replaced IDE cables. Checked power supply - all ok. Disk still spins intermittantly.
Attempted to verify disk okay by instaling as slave in another pc (mine- poor baby ). pc amd athalon 1.4Ghz 1G Ram Asus a2766 motherboard. primary ide is Maxtor 5t040H4 set as master. ( or slave depending on what im testing.) **** this seagate drive has functioned previously as a slave drive in this machine with exact same setup as now - for data transfer puposes- so incompatability hardly seems an issue.********
When added as slave seagate HDD spins intermittantly. which seems to rule out problems with IDE or pwer in first machine. It also prevents the Maxtor drive from being recognized. i.e. second pc will boot up with maxtor drive only, but not if Seagate drive is present as either master or slave. Jumper settings and cable positions verified with seagate and maxtor.
Tentative Conclusion. Seagate HDD is shot. Hardware failure not software problem at all.
Cannot run diagnostic tools on drive as Drive cannot be recognised. Any assistance you could provide would help. Im waiting for tech support from seagate as I've exhausted just about everything i can think of.
I've read the recent similar thread, but none of those things seem to help.
as half of my hair is now on floor, anyone who coud point me in a direction i might have missed would save the rest of it.
Thank you,
sam
it has been fine up until about a week ago.
System is a uk e-monster 750dvd. ie Amd athalon 750Mhz 196meg ram Dvd drive and a 20 gig seagate HDD. The system is about 18 months old, is running Windows ME, and is used for a home office, with no fancy config or hardware.
It began
Initially intermittent drive failure.
Bios would recognise drive but produce "Operating sytem not found" error message approx 70% of bootups.
Boot from floppy was possible at first. Ran Scandisk (thorough) inc phsical check. result ok. defragmented disk. ok. ran up to date virus check. all ok.
System then began to fail to detect Hard disk. Manually input Hard disk settings into Bios. Disk not detected. Suspected CMOS battery error. Replaced battery.
Disk would not auto detect. Manually input settings. Disk would not detect.
Disk now spins intermittantly. Checked HDD jumper settings. Checked IDE controllers. DVD drive detected in master or slave position on either controller. HDD detected on neither controller. replaced IDE cables. Checked power supply - all ok. Disk still spins intermittantly.
Attempted to verify disk okay by instaling as slave in another pc (mine- poor baby ). pc amd athalon 1.4Ghz 1G Ram Asus a2766 motherboard. primary ide is Maxtor 5t040H4 set as master. ( or slave depending on what im testing.) **** this seagate drive has functioned previously as a slave drive in this machine with exact same setup as now - for data transfer puposes- so incompatability hardly seems an issue.********
When added as slave seagate HDD spins intermittantly. which seems to rule out problems with IDE or pwer in first machine. It also prevents the Maxtor drive from being recognized. i.e. second pc will boot up with maxtor drive only, but not if Seagate drive is present as either master or slave. Jumper settings and cable positions verified with seagate and maxtor.
Tentative Conclusion. Seagate HDD is shot. Hardware failure not software problem at all.
Cannot run diagnostic tools on drive as Drive cannot be recognised. Any assistance you could provide would help. Im waiting for tech support from seagate as I've exhausted just about everything i can think of.
I've read the recent similar thread, but none of those things seem to help.
as half of my hair is now on floor, anyone who coud point me in a direction i might have missed would save the rest of it.
Thank you,
sam