Computer won't boot now, or just freezes in XP

[duragezic]

Ok see the specs in my sys rig profile. And note that this has just started happening in the past week all of a sudden, although I've had the computer for 3 or 4 weeks now.

I started noticing the problem when I would leave the computer and the monitor goes on standby and when I came back a couple hours later, I was unable to get the monitor back from standby. I'd have to restart. But when I would restart I would hear this short wind up sound (a second or two, pretty sure from the hard drive) followed by a click (the kind of click you hear from the mobo when you first turn it on). And it'd keep happening during the time it should be POSTing and booting XP. Instead of booting like normal I'd just have a black screen and it wind up, click, wind up, click, wind up, clock. Eventually I would be able to get into setup so that I could drop the fsb to 166mhz, running the XP-M at it's stock 1.8ghz (it was overclocked to 2.2ghz @ default voltage, I even tried up to 1.7v and still same problem so I just decided to run at stock speed to troubleshoot the problem for now). But half the time it just wouldn't boot and it would just wind up, click so I'd shut it off and come back 10 min later and it'd boot fine and I'd be off playing some games. WTF??

But it happens almost daily now. For instance today I came to the computer and monitor wouldnt come out of standby (I now know this is cause the computer freezes and since it hard freezed there is no keyboard or mouse input so it wouldn't wake it up). Tried restarting, but wind up, click, etc... I left it for like 3 hours and still the same problem. It is running at 1.8ghz too... And even when I was overclocked idle temps were about 42° idle and 50-55 load, so I don't think it's heat.

Also, although one of the hard drives in there is failing, it only contains one data file... My main hard drive is like a 2 week old WD SE 80gb. I really hope it's not dead...

 

[Paperlantern]

i think it might be... clicking from a PC is 99% of the time the hard drive failing... id back up immidiately anything you want to keep... but get some kind of HDD test, WD may even have some tools for it, actually i'm pretty sure they do, chekc it with those. it could be a heat thing even, long shot, but maybe, some hard drives can malfunction getting too hot, might be why when you leave it and come back, its ok

 

[clamum]

(posting from a different computer)

Yes my friend it appears my brand new WD SE is effed up.It won't even boot now. Now i have the hassle of a fvcking RMA and all of my data from that drive lost, which was everything. I had an mp3 collection going since 2000 and just all knds of old files and games and now they're gone.

 

[duragezic]

The drive is cashed. It won't even boot now, it gets to the XP loading screen and then just restarts continously.

I put in my RMA request to WD an hour ago. Decent that it's advance replacement.

I'm going to try the freezer trick though. I would REALLY LIKE to get 30 minutes of use outta the drive so I can at least copy over a portion of my files.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I hope you ruled out the power supply already because I've heard the "click of death" from my Raptor just this last week when My true330 went belly up. The symptyoms were nearly identical to your's but it was the PSU bonking that was the culprit. If by "not boot at all" you are indicating that it says "no boot device was found please insert system disc" then I tend to agree the HDD probably went given the symptoms, but if the system doesn't even hit the post screen, then the PSU is the prime suspect.

 

[duragezic]

By not boot I mean that currently if I power the system on, it normally will POST and starting booting fine (detects the IDE devices correctly still), then goes to the XP loading screen, but then at the point where it should say Welcome and log in to windows, it just restarts then and makes some click noises. I tried it quite a few times but haven't been able to get into XP since the last time it froze up in there.

 

[Regs]

I had that problem when my video card was fried. But I noticed distortion and artifacting on the monitor before it happened. But when it did finally go, my monitor couldnt wake up out of stand by, and when I restarted, the whole image on the screen was scrambled.

If you can't get it to power on than it's either the video card, memory, or PSU.

If you can get it to post, but halts on boot, then it's more than likely the hard drive. The motherboard though would of spit a random error at you if it was the hard drive.