To start off I should let you guys know I don't know a whole ton of stuff about computers. Just enough to get by on building my own. I "think" that there is a problem with the boot sector of my hard drive, but I don't know that for sure. I don't know what the hell happened to my computer but I can't seem to get it to start up. It's worked fine for months and all of a sudden when I tried to power it on 2 weeks ago it went through it's normal start up stuff and then reset. I saw the lights inside the computer shut off. About 2-3 seconds later I saw them start back up to attempt booting again. Same thing. It continues to go through this process for however long it takes. I attempted to hold F9 or delete (don't remember) and I was able to get it to the error message screen that says windows may not have shut down correctly (when I know it was since I was the only person to touch my computer). It gives me the options of starting windows normally, starting in safe mode, yadda yadda. I attempted both of those and same thing, just restarted itself. I was able to repair it once with the OS disk and it worked for about an hour before it shut off. I have a back up external hard drive and another brand new one from Western Digital to replace this one (the one that I believe is bad). Something I noticed when it was starting up is that it said no hard disk detected which is what leads me to believe that the HD is the problem (please correct me if I'm wrong). Would I end up having to buy new licenses for things like Windows Live One Care, Windows Home & Student, World of Warcraft, ect, if I pop in the new HD I got from WD? I don't know what to do anymore. I didn't touch my computer or anything. If it helps I have an ASUS P5Q deluxe motherboad. Please help!

Avete finito i tecnici ?
(is there shortage of IT experts?)
Seems more an OS issue than Hdd, however.

For me it's NOT a HDD problem because it allows you to see the startup menu for booting in safe mode etc. If the HDD was not recognised, it won't boot AT ALL.
Maybe some part of the OS is damaged, so you have to fix it. An expert is capable of restoring the entire OS (XP or VISTA) without affecting user settings, installed programs etc.
The purpose of this forum is completely different and, of course, it would be impossible and time consuming to guide you step by step to fix the OS.
At your option : search on other forums (and probably you won't find anything useful because real experts are not giving away for free their bread and butter) or ask a local IT expert / computer shop for a COMPLETE RECOVERY WITHOUT LOOSING YOUR DATA, ACTIVATION KEYS and so on (if possible, of course) , and see what happens.
You can diagnose if your HDD is working by checking it on another machine, but the eventual startup of SCANDISK or an attempt of booting the OS could make things worst.
The trouble is you don't have the necessary knowledge about the OS and maybe no tools, and you also don't want to loose anything. Too many things to consider and everything impossible to do remotely. Sorry.

@ BlackST > Agreed. Partially.

@ ItalianBoy228 > Your hard drive could be going bad but that isn't what it sounds like by your description. Theoretically your hard drive could have bad sectors in the beginning of the drive (where the bootstrap code is) and can't boot the OS. OR. It could have bad sectors that corrupted drivers. OR... OR... OR... Too many factors here. Overall your OS has been corrupted. It needs to be repaired. The best thing I can tell you is to boot into safe mode and watch as the drivers are loaded. When it hits one and then crashes that's possibly the one causing issues.

I don't think this is the right forum for you though, if you're looking at how to repair the OS.

I do know that I could get all of your Product Keys for your different programs off of your hard drive. PM me if you're interested.

Try a new power supply.
check cpu cooler and fan (very often stuck due of dirt)
get all add on cards out of the system
try a different graphic card

First of all: Even if a virus is the cause - make a complete image copy of your hdd.
You could then try to start from the image
- if it works your original hdd has aproblem

- if not:
Check your hdd as 2nd drive on another clean (virus free) computer. Run two or three
different AV programs, perhaps wait 2 to 3 days and test it again with updated AV programs
(thats for brand new viruses, which AV programes most likely do not yet recognise).

- if no virus(es) found:
Set up a new Windows on the new hdd and try
- if that fails, then replace the mainboard (a cpu is rarely defective)

+++

Falther, his problem is the OS that reboots : either the hdd has problems or the os is corrupted or both. A PS also may be...

Maybe it's just ONE bad sector causing this! Or even a bit of file corruption which is normally easily repaired.

If I was repairing a pc with this kind of problem I would clone the hard disk to another drive.
Then I would attempt to boot from the new cloned drive.
If that dosn't work I would attempt to repair the windows installation on the good cloned drive.
If that didn't work I would recover all required files and product keys etc from the good clone copy drive.

If a customer told me the data was critically important I would backup the drive using whichever method I felt was practical for the task.

If I was instructed to carry out a data recovery I would make sure I had as complete a copy of the drive as I could possibly obtain.

use MHDD to check the condition of the hard drive (look at smart attributes, if those are fine then run a full scan and watch for bad/slow sectors)

if it is okay then start with checkdisk (boot with your windows cd, then go to recovery console and run chkdsk /r)

if that doesn't fix it you have other options like repair install, etc

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

As Windows begins to boot, hit F8 (basically, do it as soon as you start seeing the boot process on your screen). A menu will appear. Then select "Disable automatic restart". Then tell us what is the code on the screen. Your data is still available if you simply connect the internal drive to another computer and copy data from it.

I can fix it to make the system boot properly again, but I am in California. A local computer expert should be able to handle this without much difficulty. Tell them "The system bluescreens endlessly". If that is hard for someone to stop, don't let them touch your system. That person needs to know how to handle drives with bad sectors.

DO NOT RUN CHKDSK!!!

if there is any chance of your drive being bad, correct.

if you have verified that it is in fine shape, then checkdisk isn't going to hurt anything.

if you are ultra-paranoid then image first, but that is always true.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

you got a damaged boot up sector in windows
where the msconfig is corrupted

what is happening is that your computer is starting and then looping again.
shut down and restarts.

its not your hard drive. just that the boot up sector of the drive is damaged.
more likely a virus

here the information to fix your system.

you do not have a faulty hard drive


Boot the system from the Windows installation CD.


When prompted, press R to repair the system. Setup may prompt you as to which installation you want to repair. If you have more than one copy of Windows installed, be sure to select the copy that you are having problems with.


At this point, the Recovery Console will load and will prompt you to enter the local administrator's password. Keep in mind this is often different from the domain administrator's password.

Once you enter the password, you'll be taken to a command prompt. Type FIXMBR and press enter.

Once you've performed these steps, you can use the FIXBOOT command to write a new boot sector to the system partition. Be sure to specify the drive letter for the drive that you want to repair (FIXBOOT C: ).


if this does not work check your power connectors going to the hard drive itself.
or try a diffrent power lead in the computer.

Craig, he CAN BOOT. The problem is more likely on critical items like hives or drivers or filesystem. Or bads on disk. Also he doesn't want to loose ANYTHING. So...

Even the Tech Guys down at PCworld could fix this type of problem....well errrm did I really say that?

Any half decent computer repair shop should be able to sort any of these issues.
Compared with a real data recovery the cost would be minimal.

His blue screeen Stop code is probably "Inaccessible_boot_device" 0x000007b. The fact that I remember Windows stop code hex codes off top of my head is not a good sign.

If that's the case, the drive most likely has bad sectors or, seldomly but I've seen it happen, total or partial head failure. I've imaged drives with 2000+ bad sectors as have many other people on this forum. Running CHKDSK in that scenario carries a real risk of data loss. In rare extreme cases, the mostly readable drive gets turned into a pile of cluster-sized files. The Windows setup process runs CHKDSK automatically in the background, by the way. Also, Windows will autorun CHKDSK on reboot if he manages to revive the drive to boot again, which by extension carries a real risk of data loss.

My recommendation consists of two parts. Part one is to avoid attempting to revive the disk and to read it off on another system. Part two comes into play if that attempt fails due to media defects, in which case the user needs to have the drive imaged using data recovery software capable of dealing with those defects. While most computer consultants should be able to handle part one very inexpensively, part two is likely to require the assistance of a data recovery professional. This is still an inexpensive case if the poster can find a DR professional willing to image his drive for a low fee and that would probably be the best way to go.

As the drive is failing anyway, it would be a good idea to clone it and to use another drive going forward.

All data recovery professionals are ultra paranoid about customer data.

he got a boot up sector that damaged.
it wont delete any information of the drive
all it does is repair the bootup of windows.

we come across this a lot with our clients
sometime machine has been shut down by pressing the power button
and not turning it of throu windows.
or if someone has a power cut and the drive head moves and loses the postion of the startup

A lot of argument n suggestions but no reply from ItalianBoy228, most probably its fixed already.

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Right, which if not caused by hard drive failure will be fixed by checkdisk, or in more extreme cases, a repair install.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

The constant rebooting when attempting to load windows can be caused by physical defects on disk surface. If you continue to attempt to load OS will make things worse. Clone the drive then have a play.

I'm still here, just trying to take all of the different advice in. Thing is when I try and boot it to go the repair screen (which some of you suggested) it won't even let me get that far. The OS disk starts to load and then it restarts again. I did do the repair once already so maybe that's the problem. I think I'm going to take it to my uncle since he's been working on computers for a living for 20 years or whatever it is and see what he thinks. When I originally explained the problem he thought it was the boot sector of the HD. If I can't get a hold of them I guess I'll have to *gasp* take it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy.