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Hard disk or motherboard?

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by inky960

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Last summer, my laptop started blue-screening. In the bios settings, about half the times I checked, no hard drive was recognized. When I called Gateway, it happened that the BIOS *did* recognize the HDD, so they wanted over $300 to fix it (warranty had just expired.) I thought nah. Yet nothing I could think of helped the computer, so it was off to the best tech I knew, and he determined (quickly, I thought) that it wasn't the hard drive - it was the motherboard. By this time, the computer would rarely even boot, giving me the message that no OS was found, obviously no HDD found. So that computer has been in the closet since last summer.

The other day, I bought one of those hard drive "enclosures" that lets you make an external USB2 hard drive from a 2.5" notebook drive. I put the notebook's HDD in there, and as an external drive, it works just fine.

However: I set my new laptop to boot from the external USB HDD, and guess what? It starts to boot into XP (new one has Vista) but bluescreens just past the XP logo.

So: it was the hard drive all along, nay? Maybe a bad boot sector, something like that? Something tells me that, had I bought a new hard drive for the older laptop, I'd have been good to go. What do you experts think? And have you any suggestions for further tests I could try, to make sure before I shell out for a hard drive?

INKY : )

23 replies

by Former member

Try a new drive, a cheap one will do, as long as it is about 40gb it will do fine. Then try and load on your Windows disk. Re-post back with the results. Good or bad, and then we will go from there.

Please post back if you have anymore problems or questions.

by boxfiddler

for XP and mobo, etc...
The old drivers are what the external drive is loading, and as it is connected to a different motherboard, you likely need different drivers.

by inky960

Duh. Yes, good thought. This makes me wonder though, how I can boot into Linux, without loading *any* other drivers. But then I'm new to Linux and will probably figure that out sooner or later. At this level (where you guys are), I'm out of my league, really - but maybe I'll learn, eh?

Thanks for the help.

by boxfiddler

The versions of Linux I have tried to date have had everything they needed. But I started using a Knoppix Live CD and booting from the CD without installing. Once it found all my hardware, I figured I could start installing different versions fairly safely.

I have tried Fedora FC6
Ubuntu 7.10
Linux Mint 2.something

Each of them has a Live CD option, and worked well in addition to being pretty easy installs.

FWIW: I'm out of my league around here too...

by dawgit

Maybe not. It could just be a corrupted boot sector (as in OS) and not the HD. But more likely the HD (now external) doesn't have the correct configuration (ex: drivers) for that (your new one)NB. And with-out doing a through diagnostics on the (old) NB mainboard, you still won't know if that was also 'bad'. which is why Compact (now HP) wanted $300. As for checking the HD, you might try a MS web site to find out how to run the "Check Disk" utility with Vista. That should tell you if the HD is 'bad'. Is this a disk with "SMART" capibilities? (You should have already checked the HD manufacture's web site for that info.). -d

by inky960

Lots of good ideas here, and thank you very much. I've reloaded Windows XP onto the HDD two or three times, so I don't think it's a software problem.

Still, I'll try again, if I can figure out how to get the new drivers loaded into an OS I can't even boot to!

I ran a thorough surface scan on the HD (as an external "storage drive" off my new laptop) using Paragon HD Manager, and no problems showed up.

As for the original laptop, I'm about to decide that the IDE plug, on the motherboard, is the problem... I borrowed a friend's HDD, installed it and the laptop still crashed during boot-up. The weird thing is that, last summer, when the problem first began, the laptop would sometimes boot and work for HOURS. Long enough to reinstall XP and surf the Internet for a while. Maybe plugging and unplugging the HDD so often has done further damage. I don't know.

Still... why won't the original laptop boot to the original HDD, set as an external boot drive? Seems it should work same as internal, but no dice. Crash on boot.

by dawgit

But, depending on the motherboard and BIOS set-up, there might need to be some HD actually installed internally. (just to fullfile the BIOS requirement) The OS would have to be laoded on the External HD 'fresh' so that it would have the system information correct as to that set-up. That's why people are refering to the "different" hardware. MS Windows is pretty particular about that, (the set-up) As it keeps folks from useing "Their" software on multiple computers. The initial set-up on any OS is what is important. (as it will load the 'current' hardware configuration for that computer, after that, anything else will not be recognized, as it cannot assume where it is, or what it needs to load.) It can be done though, just in a prescribed manor, from the start. -d

edited to add a Thanks for the "Thumb" :D -d

by thechas

You can expect to blue screen anytime you move a Windows installation to different hardware.

Unfortunately, now the Windows installation on your old HDD is corrupt. It is very difficult to recover from this short of at least a repair installation.

I do believe that the problem with your old laptop is on the system board. While you can try a clean install on a different hard drive, I suspect you are going to find that you cannot even install XP.

Chas

by inky960

Thanks, Chas. I didn't know that a bluescreen was inevitable when moving an XP install to different hardware. Good to know that.

But what corrupted the installation of XP?

Inky

by thechas

Any number of things can mess up a Windows installation.

A virus attack is possible.

As is a Windows update installation that failed or was interrupted.

Most likely was a power lose during a critical file write.

Or, the lose of a critical cluster on the hard drive.

Chas

by oh smeg

Hardware involved in the new computer causing the problem here.

But if you want to test this theory out download yourself a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD and test your Hardware in the old Computer.

http://tinyurl.com/3jnpy

Just set the old one to boot off the Optical Drive and with the Ultimate Boot CD in the drive you can test all of your Hardware without needing to refit the HDD.

Col

by inky960

I'm going to download the boot CD now. This should be interesting. I'll post my results just for the heck of it.

Inky

by inky960

This "live CD" version (ubuntu) is the one I've been using in the original computer in question here, the one that bluescreens with XP. Wow! I wish I could install this baby. Very nice, and someone said there is a DVD version, which I'll have to get, too.

Any way I could install UBUNTU to an external drive, you think? Of course, I don't understand why I can't boot to XP on an external HDD, if the motherboard's only problem is the IDE plug. Maybe because, as Chas said, the XP install is now corrupt.

Gee, I'm learning gobs from you guys. : )

Inky

by boxfiddler

place a shortcut on your desktop named 'Install'?

I'm using 7.10 and that's what it did...

by inky960

But I was merely rambling about the laptop with hard drive/IDE plug/whatever problem, wanting to install to that. This is all new ground for me - Linux, installing to external drives, all that. I didn't even know it was possible to run a "live CD" until about a week ago.

by inky960

You enlighten me again. This is stuff I had vaguely in my head somewhere, but had never quite brought to light enough to think about. (Yeah, "their" software, bleh. Linux appeals to me more every day. And I recently realized that half of Vista's multi-gig installation is a bunch of add-ins that attempt to keep Vista breathing despite its fat self, sort of protecting us from them...and then they appropriate further chunks of our hard drives for programs that protect them from us, their own customers, but we don't complain, and it really starts to look like the end of the whole damn world.)

Hey-ho.

by inky960

Chas, you said: "Unfortunately, now the Windows installation on your old HDD is now corrupt" (or close to that). I'm asking, Why does it *necessarily* have to be corrupt? How do you *know* it's corrupt? Are you saying that anytime Windows bluescreens, it has become corrupted? Your info is very good and I want to make sure I follow you. : )

Inky

by dumphrey

Use the HD toosl on UBCD to scan the hard drive, both in the caddy and in the laptop.

Does the laptop boot well from a live CD or a BartPE cd?

by inky960

This laptop will boot and run the "Open SUSE" live CD, a Linux thing that runs entirely from RAM "without touching the HDD" -- but it won't run these Linux CDs, it won't even POST, if the hard drive isn't in there... which is strange to me, because the BIOS isn't even recognizing the HDD! I'm about to conclude that computers just don't make sense sometimes. Heh. ====== I'd SO like to get this laptop back to some degree of functionality; I love it, simply love it. It weights less that 5 lbs, has AMD64 1800MHz., a GB of RAM, a hard drive that works perfectly as an external storage drive... but that's all I have. I haven't had time yet to install an OS to the drive, as an external, *from* my HP, to see whether it will boot from that. Would it be possible to install Windows to the external drive of the "dead" laptop, do you think? === I'm so out of my depth! (But learning: you guys have me thinking of things, and in ways, I never had before, so thanks.)

Inky

by oh smeg

I don't think so as the BIOS is unlikely to support the option to use a USB as a Boot Device.

As for the rest of the NB have you run any Diagnostics on it yet? The Ultimate Boot CD is ideal for this and that is what you should be using before even considering attempting doing anything else.

Boot it off the CD and run the Diagnostics on the NB starting with RAM and Drive Tests.

There are a lot of other DOS tests available after the Menu screen that you access by the old DOS commands.

Col

by dumphrey

can cause corruption in the data on the HD. But by that point there is usually several other presenting issues.

by inky960

of finally downloading the UBCD (the one I found is a torrent file, and I was new to that, had to figure out torrents, etc., but this was no biggie.) As soon as I burn the iso to a CD, I'll boot and see what the diagnostics tell me about the eMachines' motherboard. ////

Re the external XP installation: actually, this little laptop DOES have the BIOS option of booting from "External USB HDD" - as well as USB CDs, CD Key, USB FDD, Network, the whole deal. This seems to have become standard now for laptops: since last summer, I've used an Acer 5610z and an HP dv6625, and both of these have the same boot options as the eMachine. I know that when I install Vista to the Acer or HP, the option IS there to install to the external hard drive, when one is attached.

And when I install Kubuntu/Linux, it actually tries to install to the external by default! Strange. This is the HP I'm talking about, though. Still don't know about the eMachine, but will know later today I hope. I'm fairly comfortable with DOS, so I'll check out that part of the UBCD as well. ======== Thanks again for all the fine help.

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