Am I totally screwed? / Thank god for that 2nd computer.
 

My dell laptop seems to have died entirely with little or no warning. I was messing with eMule this morning and the thing froze and I had to hold the power button down to turn it off. It didn't respond to anything else. Now Windows will not boot at all and I get a dos-esque message that says something like, "Cannot find hard drive." and "Optical drive not found."

I don't remember the exact message, but will try to edit and put it in. I am at work now, but will dust off the old desktop at home and try to get back to TFP tonight. I think my whole computer might have been hijacked since I had no firewall at the time for that cursed eMule. Arg. This could be a major loss and anything you guys could do to help me would be amazingly appreciated.

Could this be the death of eyeronic...

Tune in next time...

I have and many issues with my Dell Latitude's HD. replaced it twice. The cooling fan is horrible too! its so damn loud, I cant take it anymore. Time for a new Laptop.

Does your BIOS recognize your hard drive? If so, you might just have to re-install your OS.

Re-install an OS from a small software glitch?

Remove any PCMCIA cards, unplug non-essential peripherals, pull out the battery and plug the machine up with the AC adapter. Try to boot. If unsuccessful, go into BIOS and try to load failsafe settings. Making sure that the HDD is detecting.

If still no boot, you can download the 'ultimate boot cd' (google search) and burn it onto a CDR.

If you can, remove your CD drive from the machine attempt to boot, and then reinstall the drive and attempt to boot again.

I would have a hard time beleive that after a windows error, that your computer is trashed. You may think so, but there should be an easy fix.

-SF

OK, I am home and the error message is:

Primary hard drive not found
Fixed optical drive not found.

It is also making some pretty awful clicking and sick whirring noises. (Sick as in moribund...)

The Sick Whirring sounds like a HDD failure :(

Why not? :D I guess I'm a big reinstall fan. The second something looks messed up in Windows for me, I reinstall. It usually leads to better performance when you get everything installed again. Also, I've never thought of a hard drive not being recognized as minor...

Anyway, if it's making those terrible noises, then yep, probably a hardware problem. Hope it's still under warranty.

My guess is a failed drive controller. On a laptop this usually means that the motherboard needs to be replaced.

Hope I'm wrong.

-bear

sounds like a dead hard drive to me.


sorry to hear it.

also says:

No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility

So when you run setup, it doesn't see the hard disk at all?

Going out on a limb here: Did you check all of your connections? Maybe something got jarred loose... (that's what's called the "grasping at straws" answer.)

Edit: Is it still making strange sounds? Can you hear the drive spinning at all when it tries to boot?

When I boot, it gives me the Dell screen, then straight to the rror messages. It's not really whirring any more.

Oof, yeah. Probably dead. I'm really sorry to hear that.

Am I totally screwed?

I don't want to say yes, as I'm sure there is at least <i>something </i>you can do. I just don't know what it is. If there is anything, someone here will surely know.

You can remove the HD, freeze it, then very, very quicky reattach it and dump the data from it to a working box. Sometimes, SOMETIMES, that will let a dead HD (which it sure sounds like you have) operate long enough to recover data.
But, more than likely, that ain't going to work. You can pay a data recovery service if you desperately need the data off the dead drive. They'll actually remove the platters and put them in a new drive.

But hey, much as it sucks, I've heard the odd HD failure. They make the sound you've described.

Sorry man, you've got a dead Dell. Pretty much, yeah you're screwed. That's why we all practice good backup and disaster recovery plans, right?

I'm mostly backed up, but I think I have some stuff on there that I really could use. What does that kind of service usually cost?

As far as I know (which of course, isn't much), it's pretty expensive. It's mostly used by big corporations and I'd venture to say police agencies.

Most places indicate you need to call for an estimate...but other sites I've found list their rates as a couple of hundred dollars...per hour. :eek:

So...

The cd-rom does not work either?

If both Hdd and Cdrom are busted, I'm guessing controller, as previously mentioned. This MAY mean that the controller is sedning erronious commands to the drive. The drive may not even be bad!

I would remove the laptop hdd and get a converter, either USB or IDE and plant the drive into a workstation; From there you can attempt to recover the data.

Done it.. ;)

-SF

Same thing happened to me a few months back with my Gateway. It was the hard drive unfortunately. Not a big deal to replace, but losing the data sucks.

For me it happened the week before finals.

Good luck!