Square Posted October 10, 2009 Share Posted October 10, 2009 Well, so my wife and father in law were using my computer while I was on a business trip and they swear that nothing funny happened. BUT, I came downstairs this morning and my main computer is on a black screen saying that it was unable to boot from the hard drive (can't remember exact message). I tried rebooting a few times and it told me to boot from my disk as Windows failed. I also ran into my keyboard and mouse would work for on the initial splash screen but nothing after. I googled a little and found out that I had to enable the USB keyboard/mouse in BIOS to get them working. Got that done, put in my Windows Vista Premium disk and selected boot from CDROM. Now, it showed it was "loading files" and then went to a progress bar screen and eventually just went to a dark screen. I've left it sit for awhile but I don't know if I'm actually making any ground. It might just be stalled but I don't know if I want to shut it down or just give it a lot of time. Any ideas? Suggestions? I have 3 hard drives installed in the tower. The one with the OS doesn't really have anything too important on it. The big deals are the thousands of pictures of our daughter on the 1TB drive. I'm hoping that if I have to reinstall a new hard drive with the OS, that I can just plug the other two hard drives in and keep all the data that is on them. I have been planning on using Carbonite to backup everything but just haven't gotten around to it yet (sigh). Any ideas on what my outlook is? I'm pretty average with computers, but I did build this one. Windows Vista Premium is the OS and I can look up the specific details if you think they'll help. Thanks, Square Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Square Posted October 10, 2009 Author Share Posted October 10, 2009 So, I finally got the system to boot from a disk and tried the auto repair option. It ended up saying that it could not repair this problem automatically. The startup repair diagnosis says the following: Session details: System Disk = \Device\Harddisk1 Windows directory = C:\Windows AutoChk Run = 0 Number of root causes = 1 Test Performed: Name: Check for updates Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0 Time taken = 0ms Test Performed: Name: System disk test Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0 Time taken = 16ms Test Performed: Name: Disk failure diagnosis Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0 Time taken = 390ms Root cause found: Bad Hard disk: So, I'm ok with my hard drive that contained the OS being fried. My question is this. If I get a new HD and put just the OS on it. Can I plug in my other two hard drives and have them be seen and operate normally? I've never had to add an old hard drive to a new OS. Ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtomicCEO Posted October 10, 2009 Share Posted October 10, 2009 So, I'm ok with my hard drive that contained the OS being fried. My question is this. If I get a new HD and put just the OS on it. Can I plug in my other two hard drives and have them be seen and operate normally? I've never had to add an old hard drive to a new OS. Ideas? Definitely sounds like a bad drive. If you install your OS on a new drive and plug in the old extra drives, they should mount and have all your files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazinib1 Posted October 10, 2009 Share Posted October 10, 2009 Are you sold on Windows Vista? Or is getting a different OS not an option? I would much rather have XP Pro over that garbage...but thats just me. Good luck either way....sounds like a mess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kid Cid Posted October 10, 2009 Share Posted October 10, 2009 What Atomic said is correct. If you plug in a new hard drive and reinstall an OS, you should be able to get at the other two drives without any problem. I would go wither in the XP or Windows 7 direction personally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Square Posted October 10, 2009 Author Share Posted October 10, 2009 Thanks for the input fellas. Vista Premium has really been problem free for me (built this about 1.5 - 2 years ago). I already have the Windows Vista Premium disk so I'll probably stay with that for now (old bootlegged versions of XP are around but I just used those when my first PC came with Windows Millenium and that was the worst OS I've ever dealt with). I could always look at going to Windows 7 eventually (I didn't think it was officially out yet). I'll be psyched if everything works out and all our data is still safe. My daughter is 17 months old and losing her baby pictures would definitely suck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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