XP Pro Boot Failure

[Joe Ganz]

Was working on a game last night when I heard a sound very
similar to the vaunted "Click of Death" (the sound a Hard
drive makes when the stylus starts tapping on the
platters; usually means your drive is hosed) and quit the
game right away. The computer totally froze up when I
went to shut it down...mouse cursor moved but nothing
else. Got a blue screen error (wish I'd written it down)
that looked like a possible memory dump when I rebooted.
It came on this morning by itself once. (I was sleeping
when i heard the case fans and the cpu fan spin up.) I
pulled the plug rather than turn on the monitor to see
what was happening. Was still clicking at that time.
When I tried to boot it up later, it got to the safe mode
menu and rebooted no matter which option I chose. (setup
and recovery console revealed everything is still there
and drive is still readable) Anything I can do to fix
this without losing a samll amount of data that was to
have been backed-up to cd this evening or do I have to re-
load windows? Specs: Pentium 4 2GHz CPU, 640 MB RAM, 40
GB HD (dual booting WinXP Pro with Red Hat Linux 9...and
NO LINUX ISN'T THE CULPRIT HERE!!!!!!!) 16 MB 3dfx Voodoo
card, onboard Nic and Sound, pci modem (either ambient or
pctel) FIC Mobo, MS Optical Scroll mouse, generic windows
keyboard and Canon BJC 2110 color inkjet printer.

[Lawrence]

Shoot... you neglected to include your hard drive brand....

Have you cruised the manufacturer's website, to see if they offer Utilities
to test the health of your drive?

Many of them do offer such software for free.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm (Maxtor downloads)
http://support.wdc.com/download/ (Western Digital downloads)
http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/ (Fujistu downloads)

To name a few....

Good luck,
-Lawrence in Seattle

"Joe Ganz" > wrote in message
...
> Was working on a game last night when I heard a sound very
> similar to the vaunted "Click of Death" (the sound a Hard
> drive makes when the stylus starts tapping on the
> platters; usually means your drive is hosed) and quit the
> game right away. The computer totally froze up when I
> went to shut it down...mouse cursor moved but nothing
> else. Got a blue screen error (wish I'd written it down)
> that looked like a possible memory dump when I rebooted.
> It came on this morning by itself once. (I was sleeping
> when i heard the case fans and the cpu fan spin up.) I
> pulled the plug rather than turn on the monitor to see
> what was happening. Was still clicking at that time.
> When I tried to boot it up later, it got to the safe mode
> menu and rebooted no matter which option I chose. (setup
> and recovery console revealed everything is still there
> and drive is still readable) Anything I can do to fix
> this without losing a samll amount of data that was to
> have been backed-up to cd this evening or do I have to re-
> load windows? Specs: Pentium 4 2GHz CPU, 640 MB RAM, 40
> GB HD (dual booting WinXP Pro with Red Hat Linux 9...and
> NO LINUX ISN'T THE CULPRIT HERE!!!!!!!) 16 MB 3dfx Voodoo
> card, onboard Nic and Sound, pci modem (either ambient or
> pctel) FIC Mobo, MS Optical Scroll mouse, generic windows
> keyboard and Canon BJC 2110 color inkjet printer.

[Joe Ganz]

>Shoot... you neglected to include your hard drive
brand....
>
You're right...I did.....it's Western Digital and I will
go ahead and look into those utilities that you mentioned.

[Ron Martell]

"Joe Ganz" > wrote:

>Was working on a game last night when I heard a sound very
>similar to the vaunted "Click of Death" (the sound a Hard
>drive makes when the stylus starts tapping on the
>platters; usually means your drive is hosed) and quit the
>game right away. The computer totally froze up when I
>went to shut it down...mouse cursor moved but nothing
>else. Got a blue screen error (wish I'd written it down)
>that looked like a possible memory dump when I rebooted.
>It came on this morning by itself once. (I was sleeping
>when i heard the case fans and the cpu fan spin up.) I
>pulled the plug rather than turn on the monitor to see
>what was happening. Was still clicking at that time.
>When I tried to boot it up later, it got to the safe mode
>menu and rebooted no matter which option I chose. (setup
>and recovery console revealed everything is still there
>and drive is still readable) Anything I can do to fix
>this without losing a samll amount of data that was to
>have been backed-up to cd this evening or do I have to re-
>load windows? Specs: Pentium 4 2GHz CPU, 640 MB RAM, 40
>GB HD (dual booting WinXP Pro with Red Hat Linux 9...and
>NO LINUX ISN'T THE CULPRIT HERE!!!!!!!) 16 MB 3dfx Voodoo
>card, onboard Nic and Sound, pci modem (either ambient or
>pctel) FIC Mobo, MS Optical Scroll mouse, generic windows
>keyboard and Canon BJC 2110 color inkjet printer.

Try doing a Repair Install of your Windows XP as per the instructions
at http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

This will preserve your installed applications, configuration settings
and user data files. Windows Updates will have to be reinstalled.

If that does not work it is possible to recover data files by using a
boot disk and a DOS utility that can read and copy NTFS hard drives.
Post a response back here if you need detailed instructions on how to
do this.

Good luck



Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."