Long distance help.

[Shrapnill]

My girlfriend called me yesterday with PC troubles that I cant put a finger on from 800 miles away.

She said she was in the room and saw the computer booted normal, on desktop, everything looking fine. She comes back 2 minutes later and its on a DOS screen giving the message "non-system disk in drive A:/ please insert... blah blah blah". Neither of her roommates touched it and the thing has no discs in it anywhere. I tried some of the basics but with nothing happening, then in the hope she at some time created a restore point I asked her to pop the XP disc in. She goes to recovery and runs thru the normal BS but then XP gives the message "Win XP was unable to locate a mass storage device on this computer". Ive seen that one before, but the troubleshooting Ive done for it is mostly internal/too advanced for her.

To save time I was wondering if anyone has experience with the issue specifically so I dont have to have her inside her PC over the phone for any longer than necessary.

Thanks fellas.

edit- whoops... thought I was reading hardware zone when I posted. Oh well, sorry bout that. Moved...Placebo

 

[Shrapnill]

My girlfriend called me yesterday with PC troubles that I cant put a finger on from 800 miles away.

She said she was in the room and saw the computer booted normal, on desktop, everything looking fine. She comes back 2 minutes later and its on a DOS screen giving the message "non-system disk in drive A:/ please insert... blah blah blah". Neither of her roommates touched it and the thing has no discs in it anywhere. I tried some of the basics but with nothing happening, then in the hope she at some time created a restore point I asked her to pop the XP disc in. She goes to recovery and runs thru the normal BS but then XP gives the message "Win XP was unable to locate a mass storage device on this computer". Ive seen that one before, but the troubleshooting Ive done for it is mostly internal/too advanced for her.

To save time I was wondering if anyone has experience with the issue specifically so I dont have to have her inside her PC over the phone for any longer than necessary.

Thanks fellas.

edit- whoops... thought I was reading hardware zone when I posted. Oh well, sorry bout that. Moved...Placebo

edit #2 thanks Placebo... speedy!

Nope - just works quiet right now!

 

[cajun33]

Did she try booting from the CD and repairing? Sounds like she lost some important files somehow.

 

[Shrapnill]

Thanks for the reply. I was worried no one would even catch the thread.

But yes, as I said I had her try to repair XP but it gave her the message "Windows XP was unable to locate a mass storage device" so somethings up with her HDD. I feel horrible cos Im supposed to be the fix-it boyfriend (especially when it comes to PCs) but there isnt much I can do over the phone. Comes down to it- it looks like she may have to take it somewhere to get looked at. Im not gonna be anywhere near her PC for another 4 months.

Anyone else have any clue as to what could be causing this?

 

[SupraGuru]

What brand harddrive? I bet it's a Maxtor. (I've destroyed about 4 of them.)