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[carkrazed]

So I powered on my laptop the other day and instead of booting to windows, I got a black screen that says no bootable device. I immediately thought it was a hard drive problem so I put a bootable windows 7 disk in, went the Cmd prompt, ran chkdsk, no errors. So I then figured it was just a boot error so I ran bootrec /fixmbr. All good. Restarted and I get the same screen. Wtf?

Should I just try using a windows install disc and go through the repair?

[crttaz]

owned by porn....you has been!

[97Econobox]

I keep an external HD cage and a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter for this reason.  I would pull the HD and stick it in the USB external and grab shit off of it.

cant remember if teh tool i used was Western Digital or Seagate but one of them had a decent HD scanner a while back.  would look for fucked sectors and fix them in most cases.  I remember it being able to tell you if it was like logic board failure or something or the sort.  Guess this was about 5 years ago, but give it a shot

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

[Joseph Davis]

I've used the/a WD tool some years back, was actually a mini-suite and pretty feature laden.  IDK if it does what Henry claims as my memory for details is all to hell these days, but much like your mother it's worth a poke.

[TurboVFR]

Laptops get bopped around quite a bit, may be worth pulling the keyboard and pulling/resetting your motherboard/HD connections.

[97Econobox]

Yeah if it were me i wouldn't go digging in a laptop for a loose HD connection.  those little ribbon cables are usually hooked in with a small plastic clamp style lock and rarely get jostled enough to come loose.  if that thing was shock/dropped/jostled hard enough to knock that ribbon loose its cause the HD was straight smashed and or moved.  the shock required to loosen that ribbon would surely destroy the drive itself.

Laptops can be a total bitch to strip down to MB depending on what model it is.  Only time ive seen Jacked up cables or loose cables is when the owner decided to dig around in it and got in over his head. my 2 cents.

What noises is it making?  can you hear it grinding?  do you not hear anything?  If you don't hear a thing perhaps the Arm is stuck to the platter.  If you cant feel it spinning or hear any grinding noise at all try putting it in a Zip lock with rice and then freezing it for a while.  the cold will make the arm retract off the face of the platter. To be honest that has only worked once out of maybe 4 times trying it.

In my experience, When a Hard Drive Eats shit its generally one of a few common things.

1. Sectors get corrupt.  the WD tool or Seagates tool can help you with those along with Windows and other tools.
2. Logic board failure.  sometimes if you can find a donor drive with the exact same model and version number you can transplant the logic board.  Ive done it successfully once.
3 Physical failure. Bearings gone bad or catastrophic failure of internal mechanics. Usually indicated by heavy grinding or clicking noises.  In most cases this is a done drive and usually cannot be recovered as the platters are not spinning or arm is not reading.


If this were my shit I would probably do a few things right off the bat.  SATA devices can sometimes do awesome things when they go bad.  ive seen DVD units randomly go bad and cause reboots.  That said id try unplugging any other SATA devices on the PC, leaving only the HD plugged in.  see if it boots.  if it does not then you have isolated the HD as the issue.

If its still failing id go a little further since obviously Windows sees the HD and has no issue installing to it.  i would pull it and find another device to plug it into using USB.  that way you can scan it and run Diag tools on it from a separate machine.  you can get the External cage and 2.5 to 3.5 unit from NewEgg for probably less than 20 bucks shipped. 

When i troubleshoot anything i try to break the system down to the simplest components and then go from there, no sense in wasting time trying to trouble shoot something that has 5 different things at work when you cant honestly say you know for sure which one is the cause.

[shogun]

try to gain access using a ubuntu o xubuntu live cd

[97Econobox]

Pull out any CD's USB sticks, and or SD cards in that laptop.

Had a laptop about 3 months ago that was given to me doing the same shit, user had forgotten their SD card in the slot and the Lappy was trying to boot from it.

[92CXyD]

Pull out any CD's USB sticks, and or SD cards in that laptop.

Had a laptop about 3 months ago that was given to me doing the same shit, user had forgotten their SD card in the slot and the Lappy was trying to boot from it.

LOL I saw that. 

[97Econobox]

Save your shit and try a reformat see what happens.  Looks like the drive is healthy.  Did you run any of those Seagate or WD tools?  they will do a little more through job or testing that drive.

[Ntrain2k]

try the repair option on the win7 disk.

[shogun]

try the repair option on the win7 disk.

beat me to it, maybe the mbr got fucked and the computer doesnt know what to do

[92CXyD]

Ok since this thread is up.

I let some jackass touch my laptop, he said he was looking at my lappy's memory.

Said he could get me computer's memory to 4gigs, I have 3gigs.

So he pulled both of the sticks out and sees that they are ddr2 sticks for laptops.

And the Toshiba he had with him had ddr3 so he could not switch it out.

Puts my laptop back together and I got a blank screen, but I get all the usual lights and sounds when logging in.

I have a CRT monitor hooked up and now I can get onto my computer and type on this.

I went to graphics properties and and I have the laptop as primary and the monitor as secondary.

Now i can see on my computer but it is like the Fn > key for increasing or decreasing bright of the laptop screen does not work.

Fn works b/c I can use it turn the vol. up or down.

BTW the laptop is an emachine and has win 7 premium on it.

I need this damn thing fixed, this computer I live on 12 to 24hrs a day.

ANd it is my tuning laptop. 

I know it is got to be something stupid.

 

[Joseph Davis]

Yes.

[92CXyD]

Yes.

Doing some research and it maybe a backlight issue, which is weird never had this issue before with this lappy. 

[TurboVFR]

One way to tell if its your back light, use a flashlight and point it at the screen, that'll illuminate it enough to see the display if there is one, then you'll know its the backlight or not

[Jorsher]

Along with fixmbr, try

bootrec /fixboot

if that doesn't work, also try

bootrec /rebuildbcd

[HiProfile]

It wouldn't be the first time a problem coencided with another completely seperate event Russ. One thing I'd also try is running with one of the two sticks (try both seperate). A dead memory stick will make a PC hang at the POST screen, which is usually blank (hidden) on a laptop.


For the OP - if the drive can be accessed on a PC but not booted, it sounds like a bios issue.

"Exiting PXE ROM" is a big clue here. Anything the PC does previous to booting the HDD is suspect, and I've had shit previous to boot screw things up. From what I googled in 10 seconds, it seems you might have boot from LAN active.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/pxe-mof-exiting-intel-pxe-rom-41235.html

Now pay blake warner five dolla.

[Joseph Davis]

Yeah, PXE is network boot.  I was about to use it to install Win7 on an X60 tablet when it wouldn't take it via thumbdrive, then I got it to take it via thumbdrive.  OK.

[snm95ls]

did you try beating it with a stick first?

Yeah, PXE is network boot.  I was about to use it to install Win7 on an X60 tablet when it wouldn't take it via thumbdrive, then I got it to take it via thumbdrive.  OK.

FUCK YOU!

[snm95ls]

Did a clean install of windows and its up and running

So you did perform the IT analog to beating it with a stick.

Nice work.

 

[97Econobox]

I usualy enjoy trying to find exactly what broke, so i know what happened and all that shit but when its your porn box or work pc......sometimes you just want the goddamn thing working.

I keep all my shit backed up on a reg so that if it eats shit i can have it back up in like an hour.  once you get it all loaded up why not shoot a quick image disk with Norton Ghost or something.  that way if it happens again you wont need to load all your software up again.

[Ntrain2k]

  once you get it all loaded up why not shoot a quick image disk with Norton Ghost or something.  that way if it happens again you wont need to load all your software up again.