Can't boot from A drive or CD - Problem Solved

[FatJackSprat]

My computer goes to the boot screen and just hangs there.

The A drive will spin for as long as I leave the computer on, but it won't read any disks I put in. I tried putting in an MS-DOS startup disk and also WinXP start up disks and it still just sits there spinning. I made new startup disks on a different computer but I get the same thing.

Is there any way I can see those hard drives and take off info or change files?

I also tried F10 to get into the bios without any luck.

 

[DaiShan]

Are you sure f10 is the correct key to enter into your bios? When you start up the computer does it say press f10 to enter bios? Getting into the bios may be key to solving your problem, I think you may not have either of those devices set to the correct boot order. When you get into the bios set the first boot device to floppy then second to cd-rom, you should be able to boot them, if not let us know

 

[FatJackSprat]

When I start the computer it gives two options:

F10=Setup
F12=Network Service Boot

Is "Setup" most likely the same as bios?

 

[FatJackSprat]

I spoke with a data recovery service and he will move everything on the bad drive over to another drive for $100.

I already have another hd, so that price is labor only. Does that sound about right? He said it would take about three hours to take care of it.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

If F10 is correct, you must press it as soon as it POSTs (beeps). It is possible that there is another key to enter the BIOS (Delete is common).

 

[FatJackSprat]

Guy came over, unplugged everything, and found both drives were set to slave. Set drive with OS to master.

Plugged back in monitor, keyboard, mouse. Worked fine, so I offered to plug in the 14 other cables and he left.

I plugged everything back in, same problem again.

Began to unplug things one at a time until I found the one that caused the problem.

It worked when I unplugged a generic four port usb hub. But in case that wasn't the problem, I plugged back in the hub and began the process of elimination with the four things plugged into it.

It finally turned out to be a Logitech Clicksmart 310 (that came free with a router I had to buy). BUT now that I have plugged it back into the same port on the hub that it was in before there are no more problems.

The camera sits on top of my monitor and I am always pulling it back towards the front. I must have pulled it a little loose the last time.

We went without our main computer for three days just because of a stupid camera plug!!
:disgust:

 

[asb002]

WOW, that's bizarre. A halted bootup because of a loose USB cable? I've heard of OSes crashing because of that, but not the POST. But having 2 HDs set to slave doesn't help much either . Generic USB hubs are CRAP unless they have external power supplies. Nothing but trouble comes from them, as you've experienced. Did you actually pay $100 for a guy to set a few drive jumpers?

EDIT: Bad spelling

 

[HdwGuy]

I had a similuar thing happen to me! Out of the blue after a reboot Bios would hang after detecting memory but before detecting my hard drives. My Canon canoscan N650U scanner was the culprit! Pluged into a generic 4 port USB 1.1 hub. The scanner is now defective! It will hang my computer on boot on ANY usb port that it is pluged into. Weird thing is that if I let the computer come up to Operating System (XP PRO) and then plug it in XP finds it and I am able to use it normally. Figure that one out! Took several hours of troubleshooting to find it. Moral of the story is if your computer stops booting unplug all of your USB devices as part of your troubleshooting.

 

[FatJackSprat]

Originally posted by: asb002
WOW, that's bizarre. A halted bootup because of a loose USB cable? I've heard of OSes crashing because of that, but not the POST. But having 2 HDs set to slave doesn't help much either . Generic USB hubs are CRAP unless they have external power supplies. Nothing but trouble comes from them, as you've experienced. Did you actually pay $100 for a guy to set a few drive jumpers?

EDIT: Bad spelling

Yeah, I paid the guy $100. It was quoted as a flat rate. He took the risk that he would be working on it for endless hours for only $100 and I took the risk that he would only work on it for about an hour (which he did). We had a deal so fair's fair. BUT I still wasn't overly happy about it.

 

[FatJackSprat]

Oh yeah, I had an idea while I thought the problem was a bad hd.

Is it possible to have two separate hd's, each with an individual OS, and the computer on a dual boot system?

My thoughts were to use just one drive all the time, but set every folder on that drive to 'shared' under MS Xp. Then if the main drive crashes, I can choose to boot with the OS on the second hd and maybe access some files from the main hd and transfer them to the second drive.

My wife is working on her thesis paper and we were very afraid that she lost a lot of her work from the day before. That system w/two drives would have put her at ease and saved her three days, if it would work.

Does anyone know if that's possible?

Is it possible, but stupid?

 

[kursplat]

FAQ's are a good place . sounds like you might want to go with a RAID 1 Mirrored array.

good luck