My friend's pc broken down, i need advice?

Question

ok the pc is a 3 year old compaq desktop not sure wot model....
he downloaded a 2gb game off the internet and tried to run it,
then the screen went blank and it went straight into dos mode....
then we tried restarting but the system cant dectect any hard drive or op system.
i tried to install win 98 by startup disk....it still wont dectet hardrive,
i tried to make new partitions by fdisk command...says no fixed disk dectected.
i tried bios setup and everythings enabled..dosent work so wot could b the problem?

Answer 1

It could of been a virus that wiped the harddrive, try pulling that one and use a working hard drive to see if it will boot, if so, then you will need to get another hard drive, if it does not, then try fixing the MBR, the Master Boot Record. Good Luck

Answer 2

Use the utilities disk that came with the hard drive and try reformatting the hard drive that way. The utilities disk is programed to detect what is wrong with the hard drive and make adjustments so it might, and I stress might, format the hard drive. You might have downloaded a virus that landed in between the sectors of your friends hard drive. In this case you might need to load the virus disk he/she uses as a virus protection for his/her computer. The virus program will check the hard drive for viruses. You and your friend have your work cut out for you and to be honest, your friend will need more info than what you can get here to fix it.

Please note: Windows 98 is an old operating system that is no longer supported by Microsoft and the newest games (a 2 gb game is a new game) will not work with it. If you think I am pulling your leg on this then go to a software store and take a look at Doom3 and see for yourself. Windows98 might be your friends other problem as well.

Answer 3

This probably has nothing to do with the download or the game. Hard drives usually crash when doing some kind of task or other. And it looks like the hard drive is shot. But, you could try opening the case and unplugging the cable to the hdd, then putting it back in, making sure the cable is firmly attached at both ends, and then starting back up again. Sometimes a bad cable does this also, so try a different cable with the hard drive - that happened to me once.

Answer 4

First thought here is you fried something on the mother board, likely the hard drive controller. The easies thing to check is see if the bios recognizes the drive, if it does make the boot order is correct with the floppy first, then cd, then hard drive. Next try a new cable, and finally try a different hard drive. If none of that works get a new computer and go custom built, ready made computers are crap, especially HP, and Compaq.

Good luck

Answer 5

well the most thing that stands out to me is you DOWNLOADED A GAME FROM THE INTERNET FROM WHO YOU PROBLEY DON"T KNWO ANS IT GAVE YOU A VIRUS. Stupid thing to do, anyway your screwed because it probly messed up your BIOS and if you dont knwo what your doing you probly mess it up more and it cant detect ur harddrive withs also makes a second problem , happend to my old comp too its a virus goign around, it messes up (for thoes who dont know computers well i will say it in not "computer geek vocab" the thign that reads you harddrive and mesan $$$$ to fix on an old comp[ because its with the omther board adn its an old comp anyway and so i recomend you buy a new one becuase you probly will spend the amount of money to fix it to buy a new comp, i recommend EBAY i use it all the time to get comps and they are in good condish too so that wht i recomend.

Answer 6

Yep, it sound like a virus, although some files run the dos shell to unpack the program.
There are viruses that fry the hard drive, and scramble the BIOS!
Try a new or borrowed hard drive!

Answer 7

I've had a few drives die hard, and you can't even see them in the bios. See if you can stick a used drive in there temporarily to see if that might be the problem.

Answer 8

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