Yesterday at 9 PM EST my computer froze. When I restarted, the worst site imaginable appeared across the black screen: Operating System not found. Diagnosis: Hard Drive not recognized; DAMAGED. GONE. So I have to send it off to be fixed in SAN DIEGO. When I asked the guy why they don't have places on the east coast, his response was simply that they've had this place in California for years. WTF is that?!?! So I'm without a personal computer (I'm in the comp lab) for about 3 weeks. I requested that my damaged hard drive be sent back in case I choose to attempt to salvage the lost material (basically e-mails, important papers, and over 1000 pictures (little to no p*rn believe it or not) and videos). There's a place just down the road from me that would charge $99 for recovery...if it's able to be recovered. This sucks though; not the end of the world, just really not convenient. Any suggestions or tips to try one last time?
good luck. I had the black screen of death a while back. Windows wouldn't boot up and it claimed needed files were either corrupt or missing. Boot Disks fixed that problem for me.... Sorry to hear it man.
I'm surprised you sent it back. Sounds like something you could've taken care of yourself. Next time, just send it to Arkansas. We have a cf.net resident computer guru who lives there.
Hard drives are real cheap now. 0.33/gig for an IDE drive is not uncommon. Best bet is that the drive is on its last legs even if it gets sent back repaired. Mine started acting up after a year. When you hear clicking sounds start backing that thing up. If you're not savvy with computers a lot of members here are sure to help. Might as well get started and gain some experience.
Well actually it's not going to be sent out until Thursday when the prepaid FedEx box arrives. This computer is less than a year old; a Vaio VGN S-150 I bought at Best Buy in August. Would trying to locate a boot disk be worth trying? I mean I'm pretty sure it's real gone as it's not even recognized in the BIOS menu. If this was a desktop I would attempt to repair it or even replace it myself, but since it's a notebook... Oh well, maybe I'll be forced to start studying now.
I had a problem, it would recognize the ram etc and video card but when it went to the next screen for windows, that's when it died. The boot diskettes solved my problem.
I had the flooded apartment of absolute death once, lost a laptop, a backup desktop, and a backup zip drive. Pretty much everything I've ever written was lost. Then my ex-gf got married a day later on September 4th 2001, on the 6th I found out espen was going with Terry Brown and not me, and youknowwhat happened after that. Good times.
Once it clicks, that could mean that the heads are in contact with your precious data. If that's the case, restart your computer immediately. If the clicking persists, then it's more than likely on its last days. Normally, there should be a small space in between the two inside a vacuum. Imagine running an engine without oil, that's as serious as the heads being in contact with the hard disk. If you have a Cd burner, start backing up your data. If you have a DVD burner, I recommend researching Norton Ghost or other image archiving software. What Ghost does is creates a backup of your harddrive so that if you reformat, then you can load up a new copy with a relatively new registry. If you can work your way through antivirus software or burning software, Ghost should be managable. Right now you should look for a new hard drive. The format most readily available is IDE which spans through Pentium 2-Pentium 4 Mother board associated hardware. A newer computer might run the SATA format. I'm not sure what format a Pentium 200mhz processor runs. Most IDE (PATA, UATA, ATA are commonly named formats) can be found for less than 60 bucks when a sale comes by. What happened to me was that once my hard drive reached around 80% capacity, it started clicking and the computer froze on me. I thought it would correct itself, but I probably made it worse by letting the clicking continue. The drive lasted for 4 months but I could only fill it to half capacity andit ran pretty slow. If you see those symptoms. It's probably time to bail.
It's kind of different with a laptop because you're closer to the computer and can hear normal operating sounds. The sound I was talking about was loud clicks heared 3 or 4 feet away from me. If your computer hasn't restarted randomly or hung up at random spots, then the problem might just be the age of the laptop catching up to it. Hard drive replacement on a laptop is as difficult as it is on a desktop. The bigger hassle is backing up moving your stuff to the new one. There are sites out there with instructions on how to give your laptop a boost by upgrading it. http://tuxmobil.org/disassembly_laptop.html A google search might be more helpful.
