Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Why wont my hard drives activate

0 helpful
11 replies

by joe

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hello,
My PC locked up last night and I had to shut it off. When I went to turn it back on I get nothing on the screen. Both cd-roms activate and run through their check sequence, but then the system wont go any further. It wont check the ram memory or go through the bios check. It has done this before, but after a couple minutes it would boot and run normally. Now I let it set until this morning and it still does the same thing. My father-in-law says that the back up battery is dead and that would cause this, but that does not sound right to me. Please help!

11 replies

by dmiles

By what you have described your hard drive has crashed.Do you hear the hard drive engaging?
Nothing on the screen could mean two things that you have a bad video card or a memory problem.
Try using a system boot disk to see if this will bring the system up,then boot into safe mode and run diagonistic from there.

by ksreid

To be sure of what has happened I would need to know more information. Going on what's stated, I would try unplugging the cdrom drives and see if you get power to the rest of your system. You could also check to see if everything is plugged in properly. I've had it happen where if the P/S is getting bad, the system wouldn't work until I unplugged a CD or other device that uses a power connector.

by shmaltz

Missing info.
By what you describe try:
1. boot to a floppy disk
2. check the VGA card
3. check the memory
4. check the CPU fan (not the cpu it self just the fan)
5. check the power supply
hope this helps.

by earnest

If nothing is on the screen are you sure the monitor is working? Is the power light green or yellow or off. If off then monitor is not powered on or has a power problem. If yellow then pc/ video problem and answers above apply. If green the monitor could still be bad or video problem. Since the cdrom activate it sounds like pc is going through at least part of post. Battery problem would not stop pc from showing video or counting memory. It usually goes thru part of post including memory check then failing to find the hard drive config is stops and says it can'tt find a boot device...If then answers are off try to give a more complete description of the problem. Check video cable at rear of pc, make it tight. If all else fails, power down and remove video card if it has one and power back on, you should get a beep code. If you have another pc, check the monitor and verify it works.

Good luck,
Bo

by mphoffar

Last few times I've had this happen, turned out to be the CPU was dead...well, actually overheated to the point of being fried. Seems from what you've described, when you powered it off and it worked later, it was because the chip had time to cool off and start functioning again. The chip overheating would cause you lock up at random times also.

I think you're actually looking at a gettinga new chip and Fan for your system.

Good luck to you

Mark

This discussion is closed to new replies.