Just gunna take a second to explain my situation. I've had my computer for about a year and a half now, I was just playing a game and my computer violently crashed (music started skipping and comp froze) I reset my computer and it takes a bit longer to start up while making this beating sound (imagine what it would sound like if your computer had a mech heart in it) Then I get a black screen with the text "Boot disk failure, please insert disk and press enter" on it. I look around on the net trying to see what the problem was and I get a bunch of different things. One person said it was a BIOS something, another said my HDD wasn't being reconized, another said something about jumpers, I overheated, etc... So I gave up and came here since this is the best computer related site I've ever seen. Anyway, can someone please help me (without me having to open my comp up) I'm not to good when it comes to actually hardware, so just give me a easy to follow guide on how to fix this crap. I already tried to go in the setup screen but I have no idea what i'm looking for Btw computer is a compaq presario (I believe) with a 250GB 7200RPM SATA HDD and it runs one of the Windows XPs TY for help EDIT: Alright I grew a pair and looked at it again. My bios is not reconizing my HDD at all (It says something like HDD GROUP: NOT INSTALLED) Guessing I have a problem with my HDD... just hoping it didn't completly fail cause I don't want to go through reinstalling crap
It sounds like your hard drive failed. It happens that quick, you get maybe if your lucky the computer giving errors, then you hear a clicking noise. I've lost 2 IBM 120gb within 3 months of each other, both of them made a clicking noise and the computer refuse to boot. Usually the only way to make sure is to remove the hard drive and install it on an external enclosure and see if you can read it on another computer through the usb. Because of the noise that you heard, it's more than likely you have total hard drive failure. But I would test the hard drive first one last time before you certify it dead.
Hardware issue: faulty mobo,cables or hdd,or what has already been stated incorrectly seated cables to hdd or to the mobo. I'm no techie but for me if i thought it was my mobo i'd use a live cd like ubuntu or whatever & run it for a couple of hours or so,if no issues arise then for me it says power unit,mobo,cpu,ram & rom are ok ,so you could most probably put it down to a faulty hdd controller on the mobo,cable or hdd,however ram i think can cause that very issue ?? try removing one at a time tho if you have ubuntu just use it's ram checker from the bootup of the cd good luck EDIT: to check hdd hooking it up to another comp & seeing if it still can work sorts the hdd issue out i would think , tho i'm not sure if doing so will corrupt the boot record in which case you need a xp disk or vista to repair it
