A while back when I started my computer. It could not find the info to operate. I talked to microsoft and coulden't get into it. Format it or anything. They told me to take it to a technician. They coulden't do anything to it either and put a new drive in it. I was wondering if I could get any ideas from you on what might have caused it. Mechinical problems, virus, etc.
2006-07-15 02:58:44 · 7 answers · asked by J. C. 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Other - Computers
Hard drives are constantly getting bad sectors (unreadable areas) and it may have gotten to a point that your MBR was struck with one of these faults.
Of all the partitions on a HD the MBR is not forgiving about things like that and will just completely die in turn killing the HD. No amount of formating will fix this since the MBR is always put in the same spot.
There are some utility programs that can recover from this type of damage but they cost money. There are no freebies for data recovery. The best program to recover from these problems is SpinRite. Its a GRC.com product. Very small and powerful.
2006-07-15 03:07:23 · answer #1 · answered by uqlue42 4 · 2⤊ 1⤋
There's a couple most common possiblities. One could be the drive is not compatible with the bios of your computer (newer drives might not run on older machines.) But assuming it was working and stopped, and you can't format it, then it was most likely a mechanical failure, such as a head crash (where the read/write head fails to hover over the surface and actually contacts it, ruining the surface). It might have made a weird sound when that happened, but not always. In any case, it is not likely that a virus could ruin a drive to the point that it could not be formatted. Eventually all drives fail, though the mean time to failure (MTTF) is a lot longer these days than it used to be.
2006-07-15 10:04:54 · answer #2 · answered by Rjmail 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If it is caused by virus, they can always clear out the virus and reformat the HD, and then re-install the OS. If they can't revive it, it might be caused of mechanical failures like some chips on the circuit board got "toasted" in the HD, it's not worth to change the chips, so they get you a new HD. Hope this helps.
2006-07-15 10:09:16 · answer #3 · answered by lab_rat06 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes a virus or Malware or a Trojan could of caused it. And yes PC hard drive do just go bad. Did you get a new Hard drive? Old bad hard drives most of the time can have some of or all of it recovered.
2006-07-15 10:05:25 · answer #4 · answered by Talkingelk 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
a corrupt hard drive means that you either have a virus or your hard drive has crashed. either way you are looking at having to replace the hard drive, and depending on how old your computer is it may be just as well to replace it all together
2006-07-15 10:04:02 · answer #5 · answered by trayver2003 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If the technician can't salvage it, it mostly means the drive's lifespan is up, most probably not due to any tea money that it demanded from you and you didn't pay up. hehe just a joke.
2006-07-15 10:08:35 · answer #6 · answered by davmanx 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
One that belongs to a Republican Congressman???
2006-07-15 10:01:46 · answer #7 · answered by jonnygaijin 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋