Is my Dad's PC f*cked ?

[Mort]

My Dad has just sent me a picture of his PC screen..

http://web.mac.com/plbyrne/tyre/computer1.jpg

We have tried the recovery floppy and discs and nothing happens. It is saying no Hard disk detected .

We've check the hard disk is connected - it is....

So ....do you think it has died or is it recoverable ?

[cowboyz]

asumming noone has been fucking around with it, looks like the old hard drive has packed a sad. <$100 for new hard drive and a couple of hours and will be away again.

Oh. re-read.

Yes I would say the HD is fucked. slap a new 50000Gig in for 30 cents and you will be away.

[Dargor]

Yes I would say the HD is fucked. slap a new 50000Gig in for 30 cents and you will be away.

Not neccessarily, the MBR might just have become corrupt. You could try re-installing windows. Or maybe the drive is on its way to death, and may need warming up (power on - error - reboot - error -reboot - windows - yay - backup!). Ether way fixing it will be easy. Dont be too quick to take it to a shop thats going to over-charge you. Any decent geek will be able to fix it, might even be able to get your data back.

[marty]

this has just happened to mine. the HD is fucked. lost everything off it. will cost me $250 for someone else to fix it for me.

[CookMySock]

power off and unplug the disks' power cables and plug them back in firmly. Ditto for the data cables. Give it for 4 or 5 reboots and see if it picks up.

Or else pick up a cheapie HDD somewhere.

DB

[cowboyz]

Not neccessarily, the MBR might just have become corrupt. You could try re-installing windows. Or maybe the drive is on its way to death, and may need warming up (power on - error - reboot - error -reboot - windows - yay - backup!). Ether way fixing it will be easy. Dont be too quick to take it to a shop thats going to over-charge you. Any decent geek will be able to fix it, might even be able to get your data back.

While this is possible I highly doubt it. Hard drives are not what they used to be. Fail all the time. However I do agree about not taking it to a shop. Replacing HD is very very very easy and anyone should be able to do it and fresh install windows with very little instruction.

this has just happened to mine. the HD is fucked. lost everything off it. will cost me $250 for someone else to fix it for me.

As above. Do not take it to the shop for a hard drive replacement. Steps on how to replace hard drive below. Yes it is that easy.

1. jump on oemcomputers.co.nz or pp.co.nz (wait for the flood of "this company is better/cheaper/faster, these are the 2 I have dealt with for the past forever and find them good) and find a HD you want.
2. take side off case
3. look for the big flat cable that is plugged into the rectangle box thingy.
4. pull that cable out along with the 4 pin power cable.
5. the HD is probably held in by 4 screws, 2 on each side. If you have a flash case there might be a button or switch that makes it fall out. Get it out of the case.
6. Look at the back of the HD and there will be pins, with a bridge across 2 of them. Somewhere on the HD it will have instructions on what those pins mean. It can either be Master (most probable) , slave or cable select.
7. Make the newly unpackaged HD the same as the old HD
8 plug the new one in where the old one came out.
9 put PC backgether
10. put windows disc in drive and turn PC on.


If you need these instructions then take the HD to your closest geek-o-matic friend and see if s/he can recover any data. If you didnt need these instructions you wouldnt have read this far anyway.

[Mort]

Brilliant - thanks Fellas.... HDD failure didn't occur to my peanut sized brain....

Cheers

Mort

[Wellyman]

Or....
the CMOS battery is fried, and the boot order needs to be set back to HD ->CD->Floppy...
WM

[Boob Johnson]

Or....
the CMOS battery is fried, and the boot order needs to be set back to HD ->CD->Floppy...
WM

Arrr Wellyman beat me to it

Yep I would try that before anything else, def possible that the boot order is out. Go into the BIOS (by restarting PC then repeatedly press the DELETE key until you enter the BIOS) then fish around in there until you find BOOT PRIORITY & set the FIRST boot priority to the HDD (hard drive). If that doesn't cure all then you could test the HDD out on another PC if you have one in the house or take it to a mates place, that way you will know for sure if it has failed.

A higher chance that it has let go but this way you will know for sure

[PrincessBandit]

I know this isn't really related to what you're asking, but i've had it before where the start up has thrown a hissy and i've done a huge panic only to find that someone had left a cd in the cd drive and the start up was getting confused with conflict between what it was meant to do and a disc beind already "in the system". As i said, not really related to what you're saying, but just a reminder that things might not always be as complicated as they seem.