Computer hardware people

[DonziGirl]

Tony's laptop froze - then he pounded on the keyboard. Now it won't restart. I ran the diagnostic tool and it's telling me that the DST short status test failed with an error of 1000-0141 "No hard drive detected". It won't boot up and gives the error of no bootable devices.

Any way to save the hard drive? I am not really a hardware person and don't know a lot of diagnostics for this kind of thing.

Advice? Would reformating help? Can I even reformat it at this point?

 

[phragle]

you can try this..no gaurentees though, power on, keep hitting 'delete" ( may be a different key..it should say hit "x" to enter setup. that will bring up the cmos screen and reauto select the hard drive. If he is running xp, the cd is bootable, in cmos set the boot sequence to C, CD, it will boot from the cd then. if you can get to a command prompt, type c:\ if you can bring it up, it's a windows problem. can you here\feel the hard drive spinning up when you turn it on?

 

[Sydwayz]

Is the data on the harddrive important to you?

If you can't get anywhere with the BIOS/CMOS steps above; remove the harddrive; place it in a quality ziplock freezer bag, and put it in the freezer for 24 hours. Then put it back in the computer-cold; and try to boot. You may get one last boot out of it to move data to an external hard drive.

Seriously, it has worked wonders for many people. There are some clips on youtube as to how/why it works. I don't remember the specifics.

 

[DonziGirl]

I've also heard that about the freezer.

I'll try the Bios option. He's running Vista so I don't know if the steps will be any different or not.

 

[Wrinkleface]

Tell T not 2 pound on the computer!! I did that 2 the screen 1 X & a few hundies later I was back in bus.!!!!!

 

[OffshoreRescue]

by pounding on the keyboard, he may have actually knocked the hard drive loose a bit. It may not even be connected anymore (hence the no bootable device message). Laptop hardrives are a pain. If it were for a desktop, it could go in any other desktop as a slave.

If none of the above works, you can take it to the geek squad, and they may be able to retrieve the data for you (for a price of course).

 

[Boss252]

If you have the Vista disk. Put it in the DVD drive and boot from it and select repair and see if it can fix itself.

 

[Ratickle]

Before Tony went all postal on it, what do you mean "froze"?

Did it give a message? Hourglass on screen forever doing nothing? etc.

 

[insanity]

Everything I've 'fixed' by pounding on it has ended up in the dumpster. Good luck.

Depending on how hard be wailed on the pc it may have damaged the motherboard. You should be able to by an adapter to connect the laptop hard-drive up to a desktop and retrieve the data from it, if its that important.

The 'chilling' of the hard drive is supposed to work tho, I know a guy that has a mini-freezer rigged up with cables going into it that he uses to retrieve data from drives that go bad.

 

[MacGyver]

I'd say the drive has now crashed. Try the overnight freeze, and if it works, have a USB drive ready to transfer the important info off the ailing drive.

 

[FULL FORCE]

Tony.... next time go shoot something out back, computers are expensive... I am slowly learning not to pound as much, always costs me money and usually broken nuckles...

 

[Bobcat]

when you are watching porn you are not supposed to "pound " the computer (sinner):blush5:

 

[phragle]

maybe he was pounding on it to get the keyboard unstuck??

 

[Tony]

Thanks guys. I've been traveling for work and haven't had a chance to work on it yet. I have a feeling it's toast though.

-Donzi

 

[fund razor]

by pounding on the keyboard, he may have actually knocked the hard drive loose a bit. It may not even be connected anymore (hence the no bootable device message).

That was what I wondered too, but have never opened a laptop so I didn't mention it (have built a half-dozen desktops).

 

[DonziGirl]

We did check it being loose and that appears fine. I've told him not to hit or threaten it - it doesn't help but he doesn't listen

 

[fund razor]

Could be that the drive is ok, but the board has a cracked trace from the hit. I have had a few cracked traces on motherboards in my day.

 

[Tony]

The last one that ****ed me off got flung out in the yard and shot full of holes. I keep it to occasionally show to my new computers as a reminder to behave.

 

[Tony]

Before Tony went all postal on it, what do you mean "froze"?

Did it give a message? Hourglass on screen forever doing nothing? etc.

Nothing, just compleley stopped working, mouse pointer wouldnt move, no messages, no nothing, Ive lived the hell of having one of the first runs of Vista laptops so Ive experienced all of those problems and this "total freeze" was a first.

There is some extremely important to me info on there that I NEED to retrieve.

 

[Sea-Dated]

If it does not boot up it might be the motherboard. I had a similar problem with my dad's laptop and I went to Comp USA and bought an adapter that makes a laptop hard drive a USB external drive so we could get all the info off it just by browsing to it. Never had to deal with the OS on it or anything It worked great.