PC Failing to boot up

[Fluffygong]

Ok so I've had my PC a while and had it OC'd to 4.6ghz, i5 build. Recently one of my hard drives (storage drive) failed and I disabled it in my device manager and have not removed it. Now my PC has stopped booting, it will do the bios screens then get to the screen pre-windows and just stop on that dos screen and have that flashing _ at the top left of the screen and then after a while it will go into the windows failed to launch, start up repair and not be able to fix it.

I'm wondering, could this be caused by the failed HDD still being in the PC, could another HDD of failed, could my OC'd CPU have failed? Never had any high temps or high usage on my CPU. I thought it could also have been my RAM as it has often been at 90%+ usage recently since I've started to play SWToR, only running with 4gb ram. However I ran the memory test program that was in the windows recovery bit and it said it was fine. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

Hope you've all had a lovely Christmas!

[Yohassakura]

It sounds like you've disabled your main hdd, and it's attempting to boot, although as you've disabled the only drive with a bootable OS on it, your computer won't boot anything.

One method to get it back working which should work would be to install your windows CD, set your CD/DVD drive to the first boot drive (in your bios), and then when the install windows finally comes up, click on repair windows. Hopefully you've recently made a backup (note it only resets computer settings, not like everything).

Another method could be to force detect through a splash screen button. One option should be "Boot Menu" select that and if you see the Hard drive there, select it and it should load.

One other thing you could try, would be to take out the CMOS battery and then replace it (sometimes you need to wait 5 minutes, other times you need to wait 30 minutes). It looks something like: http://pctechnotes.com/wp-content/up...s_battery1.jpg

[Fluffygong]

The original hdd to fail was a storage drive, not my main. However as you've said its entirely possible that my main drive has now failed swell as it was a very old drive. Is there anyway using the BIOS or a pre boot tool to check if a hard drive is working or not so I can check if my main drive has broken or not?

[Yohassakura]

You should be able to see the drive if you look at your bios by going into the "Standard CMOS Features" option (like shown here: http://www.bcot1.com/bios1.html ), or you can try selecting the drive with the "boot menu" button, (which is on your splashscreen, the same time as you would otherwise press the button to enter your bios).

As motherboards are different (particularly between brands) I can't really say which button to press to access any of the options I'm afraid :P

[Fluffygong]

Yeah I know how to do that thanks, although even my defect hdd shows up there, I'll try boot from some others when I'm next home. I've recently ordered an sdd so will be installing onto that soon anyway. Thanks for the reply!

[subsailor]

The storage drive is probably saved on the boot record and the OS cannot detect it present so it errors out. Western Digital and Segate both have drive checking tools that will check and see if a drive has failed, which can be downloaded from their websites. If you are able to boot up using safemode hit your windows logo and type msconfig into the search box at the bottom and it will bring you to the systems configuration application. Go to the boot tab and ensure that the drive that you want to boot up is the only one listed then hit ok. You will have to reboot your computer for this to take effect.

[Fluffygong]

The storage drive is probably saved on the boot record and the OS cannot detect it present so it errors out. Western Digital and Segate both have drive checking tools that will check and see if a drive has failed, which can be downloaded from their websites. If you are able to boot up using safemode hit your windows logo and type msconfig into the search box at the bottom and it will bring you to the systems configuration application. Go to the boot tab and ensure that the drive that you want to boot up is the only one listed then hit ok. You will have to reboot your computer for this to take effect.

Cannot boot into Windows to do that I'm afraid.

[subsailor]

Your only option is a fresh install of windows then you can do it without formatting the drive and losing the other information on your drive.