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Boot issues!!!!! Please help!!!!!!

rollerchicken

rollerchicken

New Member
Hey everyone, got a few questions for those far more knowledge concerning computers than me.

Here's the issue. The other day, I restarted my PC and it wouldn't boot back up. It would get as far as the Dell bios screen then stop. I disconnected everything and rebooted using the Windows cd. Screen says " Disk 0 seek failure".

I have tried repairing the boot files and that didn't work. Once Windows gets past that initial boot, everything is fine. I backed up personal files and did a reformat which worked for a few restarts. Thinking everything is fine, I reinstalled everything. Now, it isn't working again.

I figure one of the sectors in the front of the disk is damaged where the boot files are located. I have already planned on replacing the drive but am unsure how to best go about this.

I really don't want to reinstall everything if I don't have to. I was wondering if I could do a "Disk to Disk" copy of the primary drive using a program like Disk Image XML and put the new drive in? Or would the bad sectors be copied too?

What about putting a fresh install of Windows on the new drive and afterwards applying a back up image of the old drive to it?

I have no idea which methods would work best. Reinstalling just isn't a pleasurable experience. Fonts alone took 2 hours to go through them and select which ones to install. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jayson


BTW the computer is a Dell Vostro Slim Tower running XP home with a Dual Core CPU, and 2 gigs of RAM
 
SignBurst PCs

SignBurst PCs

New Member
If you haven't already, you can try an "image" based backup using something like Ghost or Acronis. It may be worth a try, but nothing can be guaranteed after a drive starts to fail.

In the future, you may look into "imaging" your drive once in a while. Then, if your drive fails, you can restore the image to a new (good) drive in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days.
 
rollerchicken

rollerchicken

New Member
That's the plan. I will be buying 2 drives tomorrow. One to replace, one to keep a back up on. I do hope the imaging method works. I will give it a shot and let you guys know.
 
rollerchicken

rollerchicken

New Member
Question: If my current drive is 250gig and I do an image back up of it, does the replacement drive need to be the same or does it not matter? I went to a couple retail stores around here and I'd rather just buy from newegg like I usually do. Walmart has a Seagate 500 gig for over 100 bucks whereas newegg has the same drive for 65. I figured I'd use the difference to buy more RAM since more is always better in that department.
 
trakers

trakers

New Member
Many *retail* hard drives come with transfer software in the box. The *OEM* bare drive you buy from NewEgg will not, however you can get it from the drive manufacturers web site. This is not *image* software but rather file copy software that will copy everything from your existing drive to the new one.

Seagate drives (They bought out Maxtor recently) are very reliable and reasonably priced drives with the bonus of a 5 year warranty.

Like has already been suggested, with the price of today’s drives it makes sense to replace at the first signs of hardware failure.

One thing to keep in mind, even though the HUGE 1TB and 1.5TB drives look good since you get massive amounts of storage for not much jack, they also come with exponentially higher data error rates. You would be better served to buy a drive in the 300-500Gb range.
 
Checkers

Checkers

New Member
One concern I have about this is whats causing hte boot problem. The symptoms you describe sound very much like the virus/malware problems I'm having.
So, before you go replacing drives, make sure your PC is not infected.
One other note, the techs I normally deal with (who are closed until Monday:banghead: ) say the small factor computers are not well designed and meant to be disposable. So, make sure you're not throwing good money at bad equipment.

Checkers
 
S

SignsOfMaine

New Member
I don't think it's a virus, this is a POST error, meaning before windows even gets loaded. Most viruses target windows, as just making some dude's computer not boot isn't any fun. There are some that can attack the bios but it's fairly rare.

But, checkers makes a good point by saying it isn't automatically the hardware.

Usually this error pops up as "diskette Drive 0 seek failure"
...which means a floppy drive. I just want to be sure, did it definitely say only "disk" or is there a chance it's this floppy error (which isn't all that rare)?

If that's the case, you're in luck, as the fixes are:
1. Crack open the case (was it recently jostled or opened?) and unplug then replug the connectors to the floppy drive (if any)
2. Go into the bios, look for an option to disable the floppy drive and make sure your boot order doesn't involve the floppy drive.
 
rollerchicken

rollerchicken

New Member
SignsOfMaine said:
I don't think it's a virus, this is a POST error, meaning before windows even gets loaded. Most viruses target windows, as just making some dude's computer not boot isn't any fun. There are some that can attack the bios but it's fairly rare.

But, checkers makes a good point by saying it isn't automatically the hardware.

Usually this error pops up as "diskette Drive 0 seek failure"
...which means a floppy drive. I just want to be sure, did it definitely say only "disk" or is there a chance it's this floppy error (which isn't all that rare)?

If that's the case, you're in luck, as the fixes are:
1. Crack open the case (was it recently jostled or opened?) and unplug then replug the connectors to the floppy drive (if any)
2. Go into the bios, look for an option to disable the floppy drive and make sure your boot order doesn't involve the floppy drive.
Click to expand...




No floppy here. I have tried adjusting the boot order in Bios. I have even pulled the battery from the MOBO.

Here's another interesting thing. If I go to restart, with anything other than the keyboard and ethernet cable plugged in, it will only get so far as the dell logo/bios screen. If i unplug everything but those two things, I will get the "disk 0 Seek Failure" note and the PC will start booting from cd and give me the option of what to do.
 
jiarby

jiarby

New Member
I made a Barts PE boot CD with Ghost on it (an old pre-Norton version!) for this kind of issue.

Could be MBR fubar'd

If you actually have a hardware disk failure then you may be too late to image the disk.
It's worth a try, otherwise you spend the next 4 hours installing windows, apps, updates, etc....

I always make an image of a new PC after everything is installed and up and running. Saved me once or twice.
 
jimdes

jimdes

New Member
Classic sign of an old problem:

Legacy computers used to do this exact thing when power suplies got older and started to lose their amperage capabilities. Before spending hours banging your head against the wall:
1. Ensure the wall outlet has enough amperage and voltage (not sharing with a big honkin' printer or router) to run the computer.
2. Clean the guts with compressed air and vacuum
3. Confim that your fan is free and clear of any debris and working properly
4. Make sure the power supply selector is set to 110/115

It's an old school approach but ya knever know
 
rollerchicken

rollerchicken

New Member
SignsOfMaine said:
Usually this error pops up as "diskette Drive 0 seek failure"
...which means a floppy drive. I just want to be sure, did it definitely say only "disk" or is there a chance it's this floppy error (which isn't all that rare)?

2. Go into the bios, look for an option to disable the floppy drive and make sure your boot order doesn't involve the floppy drive.
Click to expand...


You win the prize!!!!!


New hard drive came today. I had decided on a fresh install rather than trying to copy a potentially damaged HDD. It ran thru the paces and got to the point where it restarts.

I got the " Disk 0 seek failure" warning again. After getting Xp fully loaded, I restarted and went back into BIOS and checked the boot order again. No floppy selected. I then went and looked at the connected drives. Once again, no floppy. I then went into CMOS settings and low and behold, I see a floppy. I delete that, Xp boots right up. Throw the old HDD in and it boots fine.

My guess is when the battery was pulled from the MOBO the settings reset?

On the plus side, I have a brand new HDD to which to store backups on.


Thanks for all the help.:U Rock:
 
trakers

trakers

New Member
Glad you got your problem fixed.

Now, make good use of that 2nd hard drive.

I have performed the install of Second Copy
( http://www.centered.com/ )
literallly 100's of times and it works perfectly. The company that makes it has been around for 20 years. There may be a freeware program that does similar, but Second Copy works and is very reasonable..

It's running on ever machine we have and just sits in the background doing its job each and every night. Has saved our butts more than once.
 
Techman

Techman

New Member
The other day, I restarted my PC and it wouldn't boot back up.
Click to expand...


This is a classic example of why it is almost impossible to fix a machine via webposts

In this case the entire story was not posted. Teh first complaint was that the machien simply failed to boot and gave a disk error.

Then we finally get notice that a battery was removed and replaced thus sending every one onto a wild goose chase.

Be sure to give all the details when posting for guidance. The details include what CHANGES you made just before the problem started.

For example.. I cannot begin to mention how many times someone brought in a machine, said it would not boot and he didn't do anything just before that problem came about. Later, on the bench we see the recycle bin full of system files,,, do a restore from recycle bin and the machines runs fine.

Are supposed to call the dude and tell him the repair was FREE???? Are we supposed to inform him that he is the antigeek? No we simply charge the full amount and send it on its way. If the complainant would just tell us what he did just before the failure we could likely have him running within seconds.

Thank you for the soapbox. I'll jump off now..
 
rollerchicken

rollerchicken

New Member
trakers said:
Glad you got your problem fixed.

Now, make good use of that 2nd hard drive.
Click to expand...


Already backed up.
"In this case the entire story was not posted. Teh first complaint was that the machien simply failed to boot and gave a disk error.

Then we finally get notice that a battery was removed and replaced thus sending every one onto a wild goose chase."

Although I did mention in post #11.

Thanks again everyone.
 
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