You (yes, you) have caused an error

[Sk8er Boi]

The other day I experienced the wonderul woes of windows.

I was quietly reading my email, when my computer rebooted out of nowhere, I figured it had crashed since the reboot was very unexpected. Anyways, once the computer was back up, I moved the mouse and recieved a BSOD, this annoyed me greatly because since I made the switch over to XP 2 and a half years ago I had never gotten one. But I digress.

Once the computer was restarted I encountered a very unusual message, right after the BIOS was started I recieved the error "No operating system detected" I promptly turned the PC off and then back on, this time after the BIOS started I ran into a scan disk, it said something along the lines of having inconsitincies on my hard drive, so I let it scan right along. Then, for 2 hours and 26 minutes it stayed frozen on the 2nd second of the count down. Finally getting annoyed I turned the computer off and then back on, just to see the same "Operating system not detected error" I then restarted 3 times to see the same thing.

Deciding that something had gone terribly wrong I pulled out my XP installation CD and began to reinstall windows, I went through all the steps to deleting my install partition and then reformating it with NTFS, but this time when it finished formating, I recieved an error yet again. This time it was also a very brief but shocking "The format could not finish succesfully"

I then proceded to try reinstalling it yet again. the second time however, it did work and now I have XP running again. My question is WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!?!?!

It was not a virus because I use the latest Symantec def's and had just scanned for a viruses the day before, plus I have realtime scanning enabled. It was not a spyware thing because my comp was clean. It was not hackers because Sygate would have notified me and finally, it was not a bad disk because I had defragged the PC just days before and did a full disk scan.

Anyone have any ideas? I have never encountered this before. Luckily, I didn't lose any of my valuables, IE music, movies, software installers, since my drive is partitioned in two, 1 part is for Windows and Programs, and the other is for holding my music, movies and installers so I don't have to redownload any programs I like. But yeah, wtf happened?

[hawkburn]

You said 2 and 1/2 years ago you switched to XP. Does that mean the PC is more than 2 and 1/2 years old? If so, and you've been using it as your main PC the whole time, it could be that the hard drive is simply getting old and tired. Thus causing all the scan disks and errors associated with the HDD. That's really all I can think of at the moment.

[zaphodiv]

Sounds like a hardware issue. Many possibilitys; overheating, loose cable, harddrive intermittently works or dosn't work at all.

[ccc1005]

I had an old HD that wouldnt even be detected sometimes on boot up, happened like 3 or 4 times in a few months.. Might just be the HD is wearing out.

[moneoa]

It honestly sounds like your HDD is fragged my friend, victim of old age perhaps.
A sucession of formats and wear and tear over the years can chew up a hdd and spit it out. Good thing storage is cheap :)

[Sk8er Boi]

Well then is there anyway of having more than one internal hard drive installed at once? Forgive my ignorance but I really don't have a clue about hard drives, they're not exactly my area of expertise. Anyways, I ask because then I can just move everything from my backup partition to the new drive.

EDIT: Yes, this has been my primary computer for the past 3 and a half years. I use it normally everyday from anywheres of 4 to 10 hours, plus frequent nights when I leave the PC turned on downloading something.

[Metalseeker 79]

It's quite easy to install a second hard drive, just plug it into the cable the other drive is on (there should be three plugs on the cable so you can use two disks) and jumper one as master and the other as slave. Since every hard drive does this a different way, there is usually a picture printed on the disk label that will show you exactly how to set the jumpers.

[mcovey]

bad hard drive. happened to me all the time until I made an empty 20GB partition at the firstr pary of my 80gb drive.

[Sk8er Boi]

Shit! It did it AGAIN.

Today while I was downloading BB5 off of BitTorrent it rebooted and told me i had no OS again.

I think perhaps I should just get a new computer seeing as how this is my current one...

800 Mhz Celeron
40 GB HDD
1 broken CD-ROM
16x10x40 CD-RW
4 MB Video Card
1 USB 1.1 slot
2 Parall serial ports
and the list of crap just goes on and on...

[talkinghand]

i feel sorry for you skater boi, especially when i saw the word celeron in your specs.

[black_magiic]

i feel sorry for you skater boi, especially when i saw the word celeron in your specs.
LMAO
you definately need to get a new computer.

[Sk8er Boi]

*Sigh*

I better start saving up my money.

And if anyone knows of a way to make my computer behave please post it because it's gonna take a loooooooooooooooong time for me to save up enough.

[isus]

you should be able to build a decent computer for $500... can't you get a job flipping burgers or something to help save up?

[talkinghand]

i ahve seen commercials for getting a pentium 4 sys at office depot for 499$

might want to look into that. or dell,. they are dirt cheap.
and since you say your are a n0bie, i wouldn't try building oyur own. you will prolly run into more problems. (no offence)


ps, i know what it is like to have a celeron, becaue my first ever computer htat was all mine was a celeron 766mhz. :-(

[seraph]

800 Mhz Celeron
40 GB HDD
1 broken CD-ROM
16x10x40 CD-RW
4 MB Video Card
1 USB 1.1 slot
2 Parall serial ports
and the list of crap just goes on and on...

Damn Boi!!! How did u even run XP on that setup? must have been laggy as shit! Definetly time to upgrade to a new pc!

[Sk8er Boi]

i ahve seen commercials for getting a pentium 4 sys at office depot for 499$

might want to look into that. or dell,. they are dirt cheap.
and since you say your are a n0bie, i wouldn't try building oyur own. you will prolly run into more problems. (no offence)


ps, i know what it is like to have a celeron, becaue my first ever computer htat was all mine was a celeron 766mhz. :-(

Who says I'm a n00bie? Just because I know shit about HDD doesn't mean I don't know about all the other parts of a computer.

[talkinghand]

sorry man i said no offence. but this is where i was getting it from:

" Forgive my ignorance but I really don't have a clue about hard drives, they're not exactly my area of expertise"

i did not know that since oyu did not know shit aobut harddrives htat oyu did know shit about other parts of the ocmputer.


my fingers are cold and i cannot type well under these conditions. :-)
my appoligies

[Sk8er Boi]

It's okay, I hadn't meant to sound so rude and angry as well.

[Metalseeker 79]

I think perhaps I should just get a new computer seeing as how this is my current one...

800 Mhz Celeron
40 GB HDD
1 broken CD-ROM
16x10x40 CD-RW
4 MB Video Card
1 USB 1.1 slot
2 Parall serial ports
and the list of crap just goes on and on...

What's so bad about that? I still use this...

IBM Thinkpad 770e
CPU: Intel Pentium II 266MHz
Memory: 96 MB
Storage: 5.1 GB HDD
OS: Windows 98 SE

...but considering that I got it for free, along with MS Office, a DVD-ROM, password security that's nearly impossible to crack (http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/rupertgoodwins/0,39020691,2117206,00.htm), and best of all, someone else's personal documents completely intact, it was a pretty good bargain.

[DeadSeaMonkey]

all is not lost just most of it. If you really want to save your install without reinistalling Windows. boot to a command and type in FDISK /MBR this will restore your master boot record. this may or may not work depending on how bad the hard drive is. if it does work should save a lot of time.