PC Freeze and Hard Drive Not Detected Problem.

[scott274]

Hey Friends,

I have been having this problem since long from time to time. When I am surfing my PC or net, suddenly in between I first hear a very faint tick-tick-tick sound from the CPU cabinet and then my PC hangs (freeze) and after a long time it restarts on it's own. After restart, on the very first screen the hard drives are not detected and on the second screen after restart get this error..
Disk Boot Failure
Insert system disk and press Enter

From here on I can do absolutely nothing, either install Norton Ghost 03 "C drive" image or reinstall windows etc. I have to switch off the PC through the main switch.

Earlier I used to get this problem mostly while running windows update, installing programs, browsing my picture folders in thumbnail view (have a lot of pictures more than a GB) etc. But in the last couple of days this problem has been occuring even more times while doing the simplest activities on my PC and now after restart on the second screen, I get this error..
Boot from CD/DVD:
Invalid system disk.
Replace the disk and press any key

After which again, the only thing I can do is switch off main switch. Anyone please have some ideas what could be the cause(s) of this problem of mine and how to deal with it.

My PC General Info:
OS Name: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Version: 5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195
System Manufacturer: GBT_
System Model: AWRDACPI
System Type: X86-based PC
Processor: x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~2411 Mhz
BIOS Version: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Boot Device: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
Total Physical Memory: 515,568 KB
Available Physical Memory: 302,848 KB
Total Virtual Memory: 1,772,916 KB
Available Virtual Memory: 1,377,000 KB

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

Are you sure that the sound is not coming from your hard drive? It sounds like your hard drive might be dying. That error you are getting is because the boot information is lost. Which is not a good sign.

I would get something like HDD Life or some other hard drive testing tools to see how good the hard drive is.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[scott274]

Hello,

Are you sure that the sound is not coming from your hard drive? It sounds like your hard drive might be dying. That error you are getting is because the boot information is lost. Which is not a good sign.

I would get something like HDD Life or some other hard drive testing tools to see how good the hard drive is.

Thanks for replying Mak, I had almost given up here. Actually the thing is I am not exactly sure weather the sound is coming from the hard disk or not. You see anytime while I am surfing my PC, I suddenly hear a faint tick-tick-tick sound from somewhere inside my PC cabinet and immediately 1-2 seconds later the system freezes... From my description it possible to speculate which part(s) inside the cabinet can possibly be capable of producing this ticking sound before freeze.

And why is boot information lost not a good sign. Is that what can be causing the machine to not detect any IDE drives after restart.

One friend of mine suggested an application for testing my hard disk, HDTune (free version). It's specs are as follow and will also try "HDD Life" later on..

Don't know what is the meaning of "Benchmark" tab. So didn't run it and hence no specs to display for it.

Also tried to run "Error Scan" by pressing start, but sometime into the scan my PC restarted on it's own and got stuck on a blue screen. Error message..
Stop 0x0000000A (0xC0004B58, 0x0000000Z, 0x00000000, 0x80438708)
Address 804387D8 base at 80400000, DateStamp 3ee6C002 - ntoskrnl.exe
Beginning dump of physical memory
So no specs to display for this either.

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

The drive losing the boot data is bad because that is the very first information stored on the hard drive. According to your scan there you have a bad sector. Which could very well be the sector that is storing the boot data.

As for why the system is not recognizing the IDE Drive could be a bad CMOS battery. That watch battery looking thing.

So i would suggest running a Check Disk on that drive. See if you can get the system to stop using that bad sector.

STOP 0x0000000A in Ntoskrnl.exe

Info on that Stop Error message. From the sounds of that. The system is havign a hard time writing to a sector of the hard drive. Maybe a check disk can fix it. If not you should backup and make sure you have all your important data and get a new drive.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[scott274]

Er.. sorry for being such a newbie but what is this check disk and how to run it.
And I went to that site you pointed, talking something about a hotfix but I didn't understand most of it or where to download the hotfix.

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

the check disk function is a way for Widnows to check the disk for integrity. Not sure if Widnows 2000 has it though. So try this. Open My Computer. Right click on the HDD. There check and see if there is a Tools tab. If so i have shown you what mine looks like. The Error-Check tool will be what you want.

Select that. This will require a restart. Upon restart it will go to a basic screen where it will go thru the disk check. After that it will give you a read out of everything that was done. Bad sectors found and such. Write that info down as you can not print screen it.

Then post that info up here.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[networkgeek]

As Mak suggested, definately back up whatever you can from that drive before it goes out totally Once you start getting bad sectors it will get worse. That click click is the drive arm hitting against part of the inside of the drive. If you can get it to boot then back up whatever you can.

Also if you have another pc , try putting this drive in as a slave drive to try to get the data off. It may work better since it will only be accessing as you are copying stuff off.

Good luck.