failed hard drive = XP reboot loop, help please

liquidmonkey

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I have 4 hard drives and one of them failed the other day when I was trying to play a video clip. When trying to play it with WMP9 it would freeze so then I had to go into ‘task manager' and ‘end the process'. I did this 2 times and then the 3rd time my computer shut down and went into a looped re-boot mode.
PC Boot would be good, the windows logo screen would come up, but then it would disappear and a blue error screen would come up for a split second. I have not been able to see what the specific error as the computer goes to re-boot but have seen it say ‘windows has been halted to prevent damage from occurring to your computer' or something like that.
I was very worried in the beginning but after unplugging each HD, I have concluded which HD is the cause. So at least everything else works ok, whew!
One other thing to mention is that the failing HD is a Maxtor 160Gig SATA drive filled with only 250MB empty. I'm thinking this is a cause but not sure.
Does anyone know of something I could try to get this drive working again? I do need the information on it.
Thanks in advance

PS – after this scare I did a major back-up of all other important info I could access.
 
If the hard drive is not "clicking", you should be able to retrieve the data from it. Although it is likely it's a hard drive causing the issue, it sounds more like a software issue than anything. The reason I say this is that if the hard drive is bad, you should get something along the lines of "Windows has detected inconsistancies (did I spell that right?) and needs perform a checkdisk on hard drive X" I would place the hard drive back in, and run an integrity check. If it gets stuck in a reboot loop, try going into safe mode, and see if you can access the data there.
 
I had that exact same problem!
I thought it was my HD (250GB WD Cavier)... it happenedthree times in 2 weeks... i think it was a virus or something... cuz then i partitioned some of my HD for red hat and it never came up again for 4 months... i think it caused a problem or something in the virus cuz its extreamly rare for a linux comp to be infected with a virus... so i guess that may have made that disfunction

PS my hd was making the clicking sound and I do have a hefty PSU (580W)
 
Power drain caused that?
Didn't see that coming to be honest, but fair play to your for figuring it out.
 
yeah, i never thought so either but then the drive would spin down for a bit, spin back up for a bit, make a few clicking noises and repeat. makes sense now thinking back.
thanks!
 
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