XP home wont start at all

[mach04]

hey guys,
I have a problem with a pc running XP home edition that it doesn't start all. No matter what option I choose it wont start, I can't even start the cd installation nor get in the recovery console, just keeps showing the blue screen without any activities.
Any ideas how I can get it started?

 

[goombawaho]

Blue screen" - what does that mean?? Blue screen of death? If so, post error message/code (0X000000something).

http://forums.tweaktown.com/attachm...help-troubleshooting-bsod-20120428_103636.jpg

If not blue screen of death, then what?

 

[mach04]

No its not a BSOD, the pc won't just start at all, XP logo shows for a 1-2 seconds and then it goes into a black screen giving options to choose to start in safe mode ,etc etc, and none of them work.
Even booting with XP installation disc doesn't help. It starts by showing whether I want to install, go to the recovery console or just to finish. After choosing either a new installation or entering the recovery console it starts by showing it is examining the hard drive and stays like that for a long time without showing any notifications or any errors.
It is basically stuck, I guess its the boot file that is got corrupted or damaged. Ran Kasperskt Rescue disc and it didn't find any viruses.
Any ideas how I can get it running?

 

[mach04]

I tried to connect the hard drive of that pc I am having this trouble with to my Win7 laptop by a SATA/usb cable, and it is not showing any sign of life in that drive and the cables even become very hot. Tested the cables with another drive and it works good.
Seem like there is something wrong with the connection. Could it be the hard drive is dead?

 

[rclarke250]

starting to sound like a bad hdd.

 

[goombawaho]

Does the drive show in the BIOS of the original computer?

Can you boot to the Ultimate Boot CD and test the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tool. If the manufacturer's tool doesn't see the hard drive, then it's certainly toast. If you can run the tool, see what the short test shows.

 

[mach04]

Yes the BIOS recognize the drive, and able to choose the boot priority. I have now installed another hdd on that pc and trying to see if i can save the files that are on this hdd. It is not possible to enter this drive at all and can not perform anything including Ultimate boot.

 

[goombawaho]

Sounds bad. If you can't view any files on it as a slave drive, you're probably looking at needing recovery services IF the data is important enough for you. If it IS important enough for you to do data recovery, I would stop messing around with it (leave it turned off) and get a recovery service set up.

 

[mach04]

@goombawaho,
Yes the data is important as I don't remember exactly what it was on it, so I need to have a look into it before doing anything I might regret.
Where can I get the recovery service set up from?

 

[rclarke250]

Well you could go the lab route, like drive savers, but they are very expensive. Like hundreds to thousands of dollars for the data. I had a customer who had to send out a 12 disk raid 50 to get recovered, took like 2 months, and was several thousands of dollars. Why they didn't have the tape library that was sitting next to the rack hooked up and doing it's job, I don't know. And why didn't they have the raid management software on a machine so they could monitor the raid array, again, I don't know. But I did get to install 2 hotspare drives, and 4 more nodes, after they got the array running again. Oh, and Drive savers, were able to recover about 90% of the data.

 

[goombawaho]

Gillware.com is the company that my former company used when a customer hard drive went kaput. Should be in the range of $500/$600 for a regular SATA drive (no RAID, no SCSI). Or maybe that's what we MARKED it up to for resale. Check them out. I'm not affiliated at all. Don't let some computer redneck on Craig's List touch it if you value your data.

They will NOT charge you if they can't get any data back. HOWEVER, if they get some data back BUT NOT ALL, they WILL charge you. So, it's not an all or nothing proposition. You may get some data back, none or all.

 

[mach04]

Thanks for the tips guys, I guess it is going to be very expensive, but good to know that these companies exist.

I still can't figure it out why the circuit connector doesn't allow any circuit to pass through, I tried connecting the hdd though molex and sata, and the circuit board begins to get hot and notice a burning rubber smell when connecting through molex.
I have checked the circuit board and there is so sign of damage. Can you think of a way to run the hdd engine?