i got a big problem, pls help!

[rolz9]

hi everyone, well heres the prob.

when i download something and just leave my computer for a while, about 15-30 mins later, the computer restarts and it doesnt detect any hard drives. it says "BOOT from CD: press any key to continue". now i just restart the comp again and now its ok, it detects the hard drives. but the damn downloads are stopped and its pretty fu**ing annoying coz it happens all the time. imagine having not to leave your computer while dloading! now this just happened lately, this has never happended before. i dunno what i did or something, it just happened.

can someone help please? does any body have the same problem and have a solution. pls share.

thanks!

[sabio]

check from viruses?

may be also damaged hardware (motherboard, HD).

If no viruses found and hardware is ok, perhaps it would be time to reformat and reinstall windows.

[antix]

Are you using Xp, and have you recently installed Service pack 1? Have heard lots of people are having trouble since installing it.

[ponzan]

I dunno know m8, maybe you got a virus, or a harware misfortune. Have you try a small file download as you were doing before but being at your comp watching whas happenin?

maybe some stupid thing with your download manager in some kind of auto shutdown ?

just hope it's not to bad

[sabio]

I use xp pro corp, service pack 1 spanish updated and no prob at all, but each computer is a different world. I think that ponzan advise is very wise, but if all fails and hardware is ok reinstall windows.

[lore]

Check the surface integrity of your hard disk with scandisk, and then go to system properties->Advanced->Startup and recovery->Settings-> and uncheck the Automatically restart option.
Then in the same window ->Write dubugging information and select complete dump file to log in a file what went wrong in your pc..

[rolz9]

thanks for all your help. i think there was one time when i really saw what was happening before it restarted. you wont believe this but its the "blue screen of death". its really fast, it stays there for about 5 seconds and it restarts. all i remember reading was about a kernel and some error. i dont really know about that.

[sabio]

That's the reason why all in this post suggest you to follow the steps
1.- check hardware integrity: HD (complet scandisk of the surface) and motherboard (may be damaged at electric storm)
2.- checkk software, registry
3.- if 1 and 2 it's ok reformat becouse if it's windows making all this trouble it's just the beggining of a bib big headeache, so make a backup of all your important files and goon

Good luck

[lore]

Yep check the integrity ! If you can't get in windows try to boot in safe mode. If safe mode doesn't work check the disk with a bootable floppy..

[lore]

Yep as I said before, but he seems not able to log in windows..

[rolz9]

lore i can login to windows obviously since its the only OS im using now. but sometimes when i boot the computer my hard disk cant be detected. all i do is reset or goto bios a couple of times until it detects the hard disk. its been happenin a few times lately. maybe its really because of the hard disk. i'll try dloading this midnight leaving the comp on, i'll see if it reboots and does the same thing again. i'll also try to get that dump file y'all are talking about in case the problem happens again, ill keep you posted.

and btw, a virus is most unlikely since i have f-secure antivirus installed with latest updates.

[lore]

@rolz9 ..understood

[rolz9]

goddamnit, i solved the problem(sorry for the long-delayed reply). its the IDE cable. i dont know how it got destroyed but i just replaced it with my old IDE cable from my p2 comp years ago. now its working fine. doesnt restart anymore. and that new cable came with my mobo too which means its ata100 which is supposed to be faster unlike the old one. didnt see any difference in speed though. maybe i'll by a new cable
cheers!

[rolz9]

- the forums been down a week or so, i was afraid i could never get any help for my arising problem, now its back and im really glad. and my problem is much worse:

oh man, my hard disk is dead. thats right, my 40gig full of vids,mp3s manga... its dead. i got the "unmountable boot volume" error. found here:

hxxp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q297185

that damn old cable. i shouldda known it wasnt good for a new computer! its all messed up! now what i tried to do before that was bootfix my HD using the repair function of the bootable winxp cd. it says it added a boot thing ....blah blah blah.
after that, it wont boot anymore, now it says ntldr is missing. so i got my old 4gig HD and installed xp there, slaved my messed up HD and found out that it was FAT now. free space is daunting and you cant copy files there. its really sad. i just wanna get all my data back, or the better, fix the HD. i tried runtime softwares' getdataback, but it kinda crashed somewhere, gonna try again, im looking for the new version. and also winternals diskeeper.

anybody here have the same problem? can you share how you handled it or got your data back. some software you might recommend is really a great help. thanks everyone, this forum has been a great help! now, i gotta fix that damn HD! cya!

[El_Matador]

Sorry to hear your problem. The bad news is that as you said your HD is on it's way to his last rest place. You acted to late and the probability you get your whole data or some is really small. If your HD is still in its waranty change it for a new one and ask them to try to copy your data to the new one. I had the same problem twice, first with a Segate, kept trying for a week then I saw his dead, lost every thing. Secondly it was a Fujitsu (don't ever buy them !!!!!), took it out after two days and got a new one (it was two months old). Here I recovered everything. As you mentioned the problem wasn't the flat cable, but the HD. My only advice is to try to copy by bunches what you can to the 4G HD and then burn to CD, while you are burning desconect the bad HD to prevent problems. I hope you still can recover most of the data .

Cheers,

El_Matador