The Conservative Cave
The Help Desk => Computer Related Discussions & Questions => Topic started by: Ballygrl on November 03, 2011, 07:49:28 PM
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My main computer where I do billing for our business has an issue again.
This happened a few months ago and it somehow fixed itself, and now it's happening again.
This is my FIL's computer, and I think it's running XPSP3.
I turn the computer on, intel e comes up and F10 and F2, then it goes to a page where it's stuck, it says
SATA Channel 1 Master Disk LBA ATA 100 80GB
underneath that it says
SATA Channel 1 Master Disk HDD S.M.A.R.T. capability....Disabled
and it's stuck there.
When this happened the last time I thought I pressed F11 to get to recovery mode where it would count down and then I was able to get in.
Any idea what the problem is or how to fix it?
I have my billing info backed up, but I need the main computer because the copier is hooked up to it.
Thanks!
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S.M.A.R.T is a system that monitors your hard drive and (hopefully) lets you know in advance of an upcoming failure. Looks like it is turned off in your BIOS setting. Try pressing F10 and see you can find the setting in BIOS for this and enable it. Another cause might be that your drive has totally failed and will not boot past the BIOS screen. If this is an HP computer, you should find a diagnostic feature in the storage area that allows you to do self test on the drive to see if it is good or has failed.
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OK I enabled HDD SMART Capability, rebooting now, damn it didn't work. BTW it's an e-machine.
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Oh jeez, I lost my temper and right before the page where it got stuck I starting banging the F11 key and it took me to System Recovery?
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Damn! it didn't work, when it asked me to restart Windows it got stuck again. :banghead:
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do you have a recovery CD?
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do you have a recovery CD?
Nope, no disks. I let it sit for about a half hour, turned it on and it went into recovery mode then rebooted and got stuck again. This really sucks, it's going to be a nightmare to transfer my billing to my Husbands old slow computer because I'm going to have to re-install the drives for the printer and his damn computer is slow enough as it is already. I'll let it sit overnight and if it doesn't work tomorrow I'll have to call a computer tech we use and see if he can do anything. No idea why computer problems bring out my temper, I'm ready to fling this thing out the window!
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If you can't get to the OS, I would attempt to boot to a rescue disc. Windows Recovery doesn't always work and I wouldn't recommend it. If you have another computer, go to hirens.info and download and burn a copy of Hiren's Boot Disc. It will let you load Windows XP and recover your data files from your hard disk.
That is the easiest way I can recommend recovering a lost hard drive.
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I think those e-machines come with the recovery facilities on a partition on the HDD.
If you can set the recovery software off there should be two options - Normal Recovery and Full Recovery.
I'd run through the Full recovery - this should return the machine to the condition it was in when it came out of the box , rather than attempting to do an inplace repair preserving the content of the drive.
You did mention you have backups ... because this will return the machine to factory condition and you'll lose anything you've ever installed or created.
If that doesn't fix the problem - go into the BIOS with F2 or F8 or whatever it is on that machine and hunt through the options until you can do a test on the disk through SMART. If that comes up with errors it's time for a new drive.
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There is also another way you might be able to fix it as it could be a corrupt file system or boot files. If you have a Windows XP disk. You boot off the disk and go into the recovery console and fix it from there. Its sort of like DOS. Ive done this a thousand times. Do you have a Windows XP OS disk? Can you boot from the cd? I can walk you through it if you do and help you repair both issues if you wanna try and save the hdd and the data on it. Otherwise the "recovery" as DLR suggested might be the best alternative.
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Thanks guys, when I get home later I'll try all your suggestions.
LC, the computer when it eventually comes on should be back to what it was when my FIL 1st bought the computer, I was able to get through 2 steps when I was banging F11 and was able to get into it somehow, but now it's stuck in SATA again.
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Nope, no disks. I let it sit for about a half hour, turned it on and it went into recovery mode then rebooted and got stuck again. This really sucks, it's going to be a nightmare to transfer my billing to my Husbands old slow computer because I'm going to have to re-install the drives for the printer and his damn computer is slow enough as it is already. I'll let it sit overnight and if it doesn't work tomorrow I'll have to call a computer tech we use and see if he can do anything. No idea why computer problems bring out my temper, I'm ready to fling this thing out the window!
If your Husband's computer has a SATA interface, you can try to connect the drive from the eMachine to it as a secondary drive (I would say slave drive, but that would be offensive to some...), and boot his computer off his primary drive, Then see if you can access your secondary drive to repair any errors, or at the very least, facilitate transferring any files from the eMachines drive to your Husband's computer.
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See if you can get it to start in safe mode and if it will, do a defrag.
Go to My Computer, right click on the hard drive, at the bottom of that window choose Properties then Tools and then Error Checking. Run the error check. If it will do that then try Defrag, it's in the same window.
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No way to get to Safe Mode. I called a guy who had fixed a laptop for me a few months ago, I brought it over to his house and he's going to totally do a fresh install, I told him that was fine because the only thing worth saving is my client billing info but I have that backed up on a CD so it's not a big deal, he's also going to download the drivers for the printer, and it should be about $40 total so that's not bad at all.
Thanks for your help, it's appreciated.