DescentBB

Not booting up.

A friend brought his computer over because it wasn't booting up.

It would come up with a message "Stop 0x0000007B (0xFE49640,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000"

The first part of the message could be indicating a boot sector virus.

Now I can no longer get that message but "Warning: Dell's desk monitoring system has detected that Drive 0 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is advisable to immediately back of your data and replace your harddisk drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corp."

I have tried fdisk but it won't see D: drive which would normally be C:

I am also getting clicks from the hard drive.

The computer is a Dell dimension 4300.

Is the hard drive toast?

Any ideas?

Just re-booted and got the original "Stop...." message again.

Do you fix computers for a living or what? If you do, you sure come here asking a lot of questions. You also seem to have a lot of "friends" who all seem to phvck up their computers all the time.

If this is the case you need to start paying the people on the DBB for their services.

Remove that drive from the system.

Install it as a slave, on another system, or better yet, put it on its own IDE socket as a master.

When you boot the machine, go into the BIOS and ensure the IDE channels are set to AUTO (Not disabled).

Boot the machine, and check to see the BIOS correctly identifies the type, and size of drive. Hurdle One passed!

Boot the machine normally, to your OS, and check to see if windows recognises the drive and what's on it. If yes, then you're mostly home and dry.

You'll want to get into Disk Manager and check the drive to see how fragmented it is. From there you can order a CHKDSK and a DEFRAG at next boot up.

Do that.

Check the disk again after this operation.

If it seems OK, put it back in the dead box and try to boot again.

If this doesn't work, it's probably a shagged disk. However, "GetDataBack" is your friend: if the disk will spin, you can get the data off it. Make sure you get the correct version as there's one for FAT and one for NTFS. It's not a free program but...

Warning: If you follow Mobius' advice, you will very likely void your warranty with Dell.

That being said, if you use Microsoft's Knowlege Base, you'll find that there are alot of entries for that specific STOP error message. However, this entry might interest you.

Doesn't just buying a DELL void the warranty?

I don't think he's too worried about voiding it anyways.

thewolfe wrote: Is the hard drive toast?

Yes.

Thanks for the info. As far as friends and advice, I do have friends and they all know I will help them and their friends w/ their computer problems.

I do this to help others and I use these forums to help me help others. Not a bad idea if I do say so myself.

Helping others. Wow, what an unusual idea.

Thats great but no amount of technical advice will help as much as you telling your friends ...

DUDE, stop buying DELLs!

/me impersonates a dying hd `scrape clunk, scrape clunk`

suicide eddie wrote:/me impersonates a dying hd `scrape clunk, scrape clunk`

I once had a HDD that was so bad, when powered the click of death caused the drive to actually move ever so slightly while it was sitting on a desk.

On the side of Dell, I have helped 8 different people buy Dell and they have not had any problems.

Unless you want to blame Dell because someone gets viruses.

thewolfe wrote:On the side of Dell, I have helped 8 different people buy Dell and they have not had any problems.

Unless you want to blame Dell because someone gets viruses.

Actually, the whole 'crusade' against Dell (or rather all pre-built computers in general) is that they have a tendency to use very cheap components that fail very often. That, and Dell is too damn lazy to bolt down the heatsink or use a proper retention clip so any good bump will cause the heatsink to fall off the processor resulting in a very expensive doorstop.

Thanks for the info. From a Laymens point of view I didn't know that. I guess I've been lucky.

Dell sending new HD. The old one is toast. Thanks for the posts