Big prolbem with hard drive?

Question

OK, here's my story-one day, when I booted up the computer, it didn't recignize the hard drive. Many days later, I wiggled the cable, and got it function. Unfortunaltely, it can't boot windows because just as the computer is about to end the loading, it reboots.

Answer 1

Well, sounds like there is a bad driver or file its trying load. You made sure the connection is reliable, right?

What you need to do is boot in to safe mode (press F8 on boot right when you see windows starting to load). Go in there and hopefully it will boot okay. Now restart in normal mode and hopefully it will work (i dont know why this works, but it has solved a few problems for me).

If the problem persists, backup your data in safe mode and reinstall windows. How far does it get loading?

Answer 2

First, replace the 'wiggled' cable.

Then try to reboot.

If it won't start, you may have a corrupt file or damaged drive.

Try booting from the Windows CD, and access the DOS. Then do a "fdisk /mbr" to rewrite the boot sector of the drive.

If it STILL won't boot, you can try the "recovery" console to repair or replace the OS. DO NOT FORMAT the hard drive unless you want to lose everything on it! (If you have CURRENT 'external' backups then re-formatting the HD won't matter.)

THEN if it still won't work, the drive is probably bad.

Answer 3

If too many disk clustors or boot sector are damaged, cant run software to create another partition for a new windows.

Reinstalling windows with another good disk drive. Use crashed disk with an external drive to restore folders/files.
Need 2 hard disk drives to do this very safety, and skills to run software to repair the crashed disk's clusters and boot sector later.

And dont forget to schedule task manager to run backup at least once a week to save a lot time later.

Answer 4

your hard drive is dead. if you bring it to a tech guy they can save your data but you're gonna need a new one. i had the same probelem twice and clinging on only gets frusterating