Help needed ASAP: PC not booting

[Halcyon]

Ahhh please tell me nothing bad has happened as 1) I only finished building my PC two months ago, and 2) I need my machine working.

Basically I turned round and saw a big blue screen in WinXP Pro.
It said something about an error and it was now dumping the disc or something like that.
I've never had that before.
Anyway, nothing would move so I rebooted and now I cant get anywhere past the Pentium4 screen and it sits there and sometimes says disk error. Reboot by pressing ctrl alt Del.

Whoever can help me here, I really need your help.
I neeed this machine working again ASAP.
I have spent loads on it and don't need this happening to me right now.

Thanks for any help.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Ahhh please tell me nothing bad has happened as 1) I only finished building my PC two months ago, and 2) I need my machine working.

Basically I turned round and saw a big blue screen in WinXP Pro.
It said something about an error and it was now dumping the disc or something like that.
I've never had that before.
Anyway, nothing would move so I rebooted and now I cant get anywhere past the Pentium4 screen and it sits there and sometimes says disk error. Reboot by pressing ctrl alt Del.

Whoever can help me here, I really need your help.
I neeed this machine working again ASAP.
I have spent loads on it and don't need this happening to me right now.

Thanks for any help.

Try resetting your BIOS to defaults (if you can get into the BIOS, if not, use the CMOS clear jumper on your motherboard), if that doesn't work try repairing the install with the XP CD.

[Halcyon]

I'm in the BIOS right now.
changing to defaults didnt do anything different when I rebooted.

It seems to search for an IDE hard drive.
I dont know why since its always been fine before and I havent done any changes to the system.
I've checked in bios and my hard drive is listed where its always been.

Rather obvious, but have you made sure all connections are secure? Sounds like the PC is having difficulty accessing the hard disc. Will it boot from CD or floppy?

[Millay]

Would the blue screen error be something laong the lines of IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL if so I think there is big probs ahead for you lemme do a search quick

[Halcyon]

I'l have a look. But I doubt it. It hasnt been moved.

Originally Posted by Halcyon

I'm in the BIOS right now.
changing to defaults didnt do anything different when I rebooted.

It seems to search for an IDE hard drive.
I dont know why since its always been fine before and I havent done any changes to the system.
I've checked in bios and my hard drive is listed where its always been.

If the connectors are secure, and the BIOS is seeing the hard drive, could be the boot sector is corrupted. I've never had to use it myself, but I would think XP repair should be able to fix it if this is the problem (as suggested by Bifta) - assuming a) you can boot from CD. and b) you have an XP CD (I understand some systems come with XP pre-installed but no CD - not much use if you can't access the hard drive).

[Halcyon]

OK, I'm now starting to breathe again.
I started to panic badly as I have never spent more money on anything else so get kind of worried on these kinds of things, especially seeing I built it myself and it would be hell to take every part to pieces again and send back.

I opened it up. I checked the SATA cables and have pushed them in.
They seemed to go in just slightly more so the little devils seem to have gone walkies during the night !!!
I've just rebooted and it gives me this info on the Promise controller can not detect any IDE drives or something like that.
Anyway, once its done that it loads Windows. Phew.
I guess now I just have to turn off that Promise controller in the Bios.

Whats strange I guess, And I've had this since day one, is that my SATA drive has always been on IDE 3 for some reason in the Bios. Not as Primary IDE.

Anyway, Im at my desktop. (Thankgoodness) and am about to Backup.

Now I just want to figure out how the hell this happened in the first place as I know some products fail in the first couple of weeks after build but I've been running this system for over 4 months now and its stable.

Thanks all for your help. I feel a bit better now.

Glad it's sorted.

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by Millay

Would the blue screen error be something laong the lines of IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL if so I think there is big probs ahead for you lemme do a search quick

Nope dont recall seeing that error.
I'm back in business now.
Seems the nudge of the SATA cable has fixed things so far, however its strange it booted fine, and happened about an hour into working.

The blue screen was a full screen thing with white text explaining that windows was being automatically shut down and at the bottom it said it was stack dumping hard drive or something like that.
And from that point onwards it died.

Luckily I got into the Bios even after it telling me there was no bios installed and then went undergorund and turned off and opened up the machine.

Lets hope it works for good now.

I've been using Win98 for years so am lost when it comes to XP Pro.
I havent got round to making backups and stuff as yet so if anyoe can point me in the right direction for emergency disks, files I should copy, and any other stuff that needs doing to XP on a regular basis, I'd appreciate it.
At the moment I just do the normal defragging and scan disking.

Thanks to you all for the help.

[AndrewJ]

Glad its running again for you mate

have a on me to calm your nerves.

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by Millay

Would the blue screen error be something laong the lines of IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL if so I think there is big probs ahead for you lemme do a search quick

I've had that error a few times