My PC won't load up [Semi-solved]

[Stupot]

Can anyone help me?... I went to turn the computer on yesterday and it says it needs a boot disk?Ã,  Why would it say this, It's never needed it before (except maybe when I first ran it).

I don't know anything about hardware so any assistance would be great.

First It says "Auto-Detecting Pri-Master". What is this? and how might it be affecting my computer?
Then it beeps a couple of times and saysÃ,  press f1 to resume, so I do and it asks for a boot diskette.

Something similar happened before and I took the USB cable for my Digital Camera out of the socket and it worked fine, but now it still does it even when there is nothing in any of the USB ports.

Any ideas, however seemingly useless will be great, I'd hate to think I've lost everything I've been working on.

Cheers Guys.

PS Im on my mums computer incase you were wondering how I could type this without a computer

[Tuomas]

"Auto-Detecting Pri-Master" ... I would suppose you've got some mixup with hard drive jumpers. Or perhaps there's a pin bent or loose, or your IDE is disconnected... It should respond something like "IDE Hard disk" Iirc.

Or then it's some odd BIOS problem :S

[Stupot]

Yeh It does say that.
Heres a complete transcript of what it says:

WAIT
Auto-detecting Pri-master... Press ESC to abort.

(if I leave it it says...)       ... IDE HARD DISC

Auto Detecting Sec-Master... ATAPI CDROM

SEC MAster 0016 Hitachi DVD-ROm GD-7000 (I guess thats just the make)

PRI MASTER HDD Error
Run SETUP
Press f1 to resume.

Searching for boot record from CDROM... Not found
Searching for boot record from Floppy... Not found
Searching for boot record from SCSI... Not found

Drive not ready
Insert Boot Diskette in A:
Press any key when ready


And thats it...
Any Ideas how I reconnect this IDE thingummy-bob, whatever that is? hehe

[InCreator]

What I see... it might happen that your windows got either damaged, or whole hard disk.

If you have your original windows disk, I suggest inserting it before boot and reinstall it. But to avoid this--

* use another well-booting HD to see if files on old HD are still there. Or take your HD to a friend and let him check.
* go to BIOS and default everything and try again
* go to BIOS and disable all drives except the problematic HD & try boot

Such crap has happened to me few times when shutting down computer improperly, like when XP loading screen was still on. One chance of hundred, but it may mess up whole windows installation, if you turn machine off at this very bad millisecond.  And I had "luck" to stumble upon this moment.

All times, I had to reinstall winXP. And it caused trouble, since old WinXP installation didn't go away, so I got this stupid "select your OS" screen at startup--

[Tuomas]

That would be the cable with several wires going from your hard drive straight to your motherboard to where it says IDE1 or 2 or whatever. OR maybe your BIOS is really broken.

[Stupot]

Well I've just opened her up and peered inside.  Nothing seemed to be loose or disconnected, but then, what do I know?

I'll try using the disk?... What one is it, the one with Windows XP on it?
What is the BIOS? I'd be eternally grateful if someone could give me some sort of step-by-step idiot's guide to what I need to do... Thanks guys.

[Da_Elf]

to be honest if you say "what is the BIOS" then i really dont think you should be going into it or even going inside your computer

[Stupot]

Hahaha, I'm not stupid I'm just ignorant.  I won't touch anything unless I'm 100% sure what it is I'm touching.  Which is why I'm asking for guidance... I've got common sense, I just haven't learnt the ins and outs of how a computer works.

[Huw Dawson]

BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. It basically is the equivalent of the guy who comes to the theatre at about 4am on the day of a performance to make sure everything's there, nothing's broken and to make sure all the drunk celebrity's arn't still there from last night.

That's possibly the dumbest explanation for a BIOS ever. :p

- Huw

[Stupot]

Hehe, nice analogy.
I could still use a few words of advice if anyone is willing to help.  There's a smiley in it for you.  Failing that I'll have to get someone out to do it for me and I won't have learned anything.
By all means PM me if this thread is getting boring.  Cheers.

[LGM]

Sounds to me like your Hard-Drive needs to be repaired. Try putting in your windows installation CD and going into the repair mode and try to scan the disk and maybe possibly fix the MBR.

[CodeJunkie]

EDIT: See * below

I'm no expert with technical support, but I've had more than my fair share of problems.  Here's my advice, but remember that half the stuff I'll say is probably a load of crap.

To access the BIOS, restart your computer and early on in the boot you'll be prompted to hit a button (usually F8 or DEL) for setup/BIOS.  Just hammer the button as soon as you see the message or it might ignore you.  Someone in the BIOS you should find a boot order (CMOS settings or something) and it'll list your CD drive, floppy, harddisks and anything else.  If it isn't already, move your floppy drive to top and CD drive below, then your harddisk at the bottom.  Don't change any other settings.

A stupid point to make, but make sure you have no floppy or cd in your pc since they can stop booting.  Also find your harddisk manufacturer+model (either from boot screen, manual or reading off the actual harddisk) and look on the manufacturer's website for a harddisk scanner.  They usually come on a form you can stick onto a floppy and boot off of, and it may give you a little extra essential information.

Another thing to try is simply to switch your computer off and flick the isolator switch (a button near the top on the back of the computer, or if you don't have one switch the PC off at the wall).  Pull out all your cables going to your harddisk (IDE are the long ribbon ones, SATA are the little red ones if you have them and the white one with multicoloured wires is the power cable).  Check the pins on the connectors aren't bent (don't worry if you have 'missing' pins, lots of connectors do).  Now plug the cables back in again.  You'll also find on the back of your harddisk that there is a little grid of pins with possibly a plastic bit covering two of them.  That plastic bit is the jumper, push it in all the way if it isn't, but keep it on the same pins.

If you're still getting trouble, or you don't feel it's worth doing some of those things, google for 'Knoppix'.  It's a type of Linux that you can boot off a CD.  You'll need to download what is called a disk image, or .iso, and burn it to a CD.  Your burning program should have a separate option for burning an image.  Make sure your boot order (see first paragraph) is set up correctly, then restart your computer with the CD in.  You'll probably find yourself waiting 10 minutes or so for everything to load off the CD.  Skip past the boot options.  When you're at the desktop and loading's done, you should find your harddisk partitions on the left-hand side.  Open them up and browse through to see if any damage has been done, but remember that you can't modify anything (or you can modify either NTFS or FAT32, can't remember if that's true).  If you're planning to reformat/reinstall, at least grab some floppies or a USB drive if you have one and make some backups under Knoppix.

*Actually after reading your first post again, it probably isn't a harddisk problem, although the harddisk might be affected.  Giving your BIOS a good run-through is my best advice.  If you can find your motherboard manual there should be a good section on configuring the BIOS, otherwise see if you can find a version of the manual on the manufacturer's website.

[Stupot]

Thanks for the info guys, but (touch wood) I won't be needing it for the time being.
I tried turning the computer on today, and it worked.  I'm not sure why, but I suspect maybe theres a loose connection wire or soemthing that I've unwittingly jogged back into place... this probably means that the problem will happen again, but until then i'm back.

[Tuomas]

Or one of the pins is dirty or rusted and had a connection failure or just problems there, you know, that's why you scratch the pins on a car battery, to get the resistance minimized.

[Nostradamus]

Since it works now this points at hardware and not BIOS, MBR of boot files. Unless the cable or its connetors is bad (try a differnet cable to decide) I would highly advise you to buy another hard drive and image everything on the current hard drive and put it on the new one as long as the current HD still runs and before you lose your data.