Scaleo Hard Drive problem

[paultap123]

Hi there,

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 603 PC running Windows XP Home Edition.

 

Over the weekend I switched on the PC and get a black screen telling me that it cannot find a device to Boot from and to insert boot disk and hit any key.

 

Pressed Del when I restarted the PC and checked that the PC is trying to boot from the Hard Drive. It is.

 

The PC is a couple of years old but I had a similar problem about 2 months after I bought it. An engineer came out and managed to fix it (he claimed I wasn't waiting long enough for it to find the hard drive and that it fixed itself!). At the time he said that it was due to over-heating on the controller(?) for the hard drive and not to leave the PC for long periods of time. He also told me if it happened again I'd have to dump the existing hard drive and replace it with a brand new one.

 

Basically I think the PC cannot detect the hard drive. Is there anything I can do to fix this? I'd like to think that this is something that can be repaired rather than having to dump the disk. Anyone any experience of this type of problem?

 

Any help or thoughts on my problem greatfully received!

Thanks,

Paul

[Dalo Harkin]

Is the primary boot device set to HDD?

The drive could have just died.

 

If he was referring to the MCH overheating - I doubt it very much as they are all either passive or actively cooled.

Passive - heatpipes and heatsinks

Active - Fans

and both are more than capable of dispersing heat.

 

Check in the BIOS that the HDD is the first boot device and post back please

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Hi Paul

 

Welcome to FPCH

 

First of all mate do yourself the biggest favour ever and never ring that supposed "engineer" again, he has no idea what he's talking about.

 

Try booting in Safe Mode if you can by tapping F8 on boot up and choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.

 

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z144/Wolfeymoles-Pics/FPCH%20files/win2ksafemode2.jpg

 

At this point type chkdsk C: /r

 

Look at further details on this here;

 

How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP

[Goku]

Hello and Welcome to FPCH Paul. :)

 

First, try what Dalo said but from what you posted, I think you have already tried it. Even if you have, please try it again and see if it is of any help or not.

 

If the above doesn't work, then try repairing the Master Boot Record. The first reason is more likely for the cause of your problem but if the drive is unbootable, you may get the errror message too.

 

Repair and Restore Master Boot Record (MBR)

 

Please try and see if that too resolves the problem or not. Let us know how it goes. Good Luck. :)

 

-- Goku

[paultap123]

Guys,

 

First off, thanks for all your suggestions yesterday.

I printed them all off and set off for home to spend a couple of hours cursing at my PC.

 

When I powered up the PC, pressed 'Del' for setup and checked the boot options in the BIOS I could see there were 3 options for boot device as opposed to the 2 that had been there over the weekend. When I went into the 3rd option to change it from 'Disabled' I now had 3 boot devices to choose from. I selected the 'new' 3rd one and booted up the PC.

 

Everything came up fine! Windows initialised; hard drive available; all data accessible.

 

It would appear that the only 2 options I had to boot up previously were:

1. DVD drive.

2. Generic Storage Device

 

I now had a 3rd option which is apparently the hard drive.

 

Obviously I'm delighted that my PC and Hard Drive are working again but I'd like to know why (for the 2nd time is as many years) this problem has occurred.

 

Is there anything I should check while I have the machine working again?

 

Thanks again for all your help on this so far,

Paul

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Just make sure that the hard drive is always set as first boot device Paul.

If you need to run any repairs from the windows disk you will have to set the dvd drive as first boot, change it back to HDD afterwards.