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Frustrated Newbie

November 11th, 2010, 12:16

How's it going, everyone? Just thought I would introduce myself. My name is Olivia and I'm new to the forums and rather frustrated with my current situation. Basically, I'm having issues with my internal hard drive. Plain and Simple, it isn't working. Everything else in the computer seems to be working properly, but the operating system isn't booting and I have a ton of files on there that were being shared by people I do freelance with.

I hear the power supply go on and even the lights go on, but I'm left with a completely blank screen. I checked the wiring in the case and even went as far as having someone else check -- everything was fine. So yeah. . .if anyone can perhaps provide any sort of advice, I would be thrilled!!! Thanks a bunch, guys! Talk to you all soon!

Re: Frustrated Newbie

November 11th, 2010, 12:27

Hello,

I think the best what you can do now is remove your hard drive, move to other computer and try to connect it like second one.
If the drive is still not working or something is wrong, you should stop right there and seek for professional help.

Good luck

Janos

Re: Frustrated Newbie

November 11th, 2010, 13:41

1st is the BIOS seeing your HDD?

2nd is the black screen arriving after the post and Windows initial boot screen then it goes to a black screen and Windows does not finish to boot your system?

If this is happening this can be from a virus or even an update failure that did not go well. You can try to go to safe mode and do a system restore on this one.

If this is not the case and the BIOS sees your drive but it will not boot at all you will need to use a tool to clone it with to another HDD. You should not try working on this drive if there is some sort of other failure on it. If you can clone this drive to a new HDD then it is possible for you to work from the cloned drive and use a DR software like for example Get Data Back NTSF and try and see your file structure. If you arrive at this point add yet another HDD to your system and save all your files to it.

Now use the new HDD and reload your OS and all your program and move on. After with your original HDD try to use MHDD and check the status of your drive. You can remap bad sectors and do a zero fill of your HDD to see if you can use this one again. I do not really recommand to use a failing drive again. They fail for a reason.

Once you have all this done if you share data then you should make at least 3 back up copies of your shared data so if this happens again you are not lost without your data. Back up is your best best when a system fails. You can always use this to rebuild your system.

Re: Frustrated Newbie

November 11th, 2010, 18:12

If you see nothing on the screen, and if all the fans are spinning, then I wouldn't immediately suspect the hard drive. To narrow down the problem, I would disconnect everything except the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and graphics card. Then see how the machine powers up.

If your hard drive turns out to be OK, then I would suggest that you post your question to a different forum, eg ...

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/
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