Crash

[dracan]

A friends has asked me to look at her computer. It gets halfway through booting up, then there's a loud clicking noise, and it reboots. It does this everytime. Because of the clicking sound, I immediately thought 'knackered harddrive'. It's a western digital one, so I went to the website and downloaded their diagnostics software. I've run that quite a few times on it, and everytime it says there is no errors. My next thought is to just reinstall Windows, and see what happens. I'm just worried that I'm wasting my time, as that clicking sound makes me thing it's a physical fault, not a software fault (although I could be wrong - I'm not an IT expert). Is there anything else I can try before reinstalling everything?

Thanks for any info,
Dan.

 

[speed01]

Sounds like a bad drive.. as in physically bad. Time to pick up a new one.

Speed

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Clicks and clunks usually mean a dead drive although it's also possible that you have a bad PSU. I've seen this happen with bad PSUs.

Download the hard drive manufactuer's diagnostic and run it first and see if you get an error.

 

[theMan]

he already used the diagnostic tool. can you tell at all where the sound is coming from? floppy drives often make really weird noises. i would just reinstall windows. if the diagnostic tility worked, its not the drive making the noise. there is no way a drive making that noise could pass the test.

 

[aGreenAgent]

I'm thinking PSU. But also look at the wiring inside the computer. If there is a device other than the hard drive on that power line that goes into the PSU, take it off. It's possible that some device is pulling a lot of power at that point and shutting off the HD.

Also, try unplugged unnecessary drives, like extra CD ROMs, etc. etc. and see if it does it still.

A bigger PSU would fix this if this is the problem, since it's just a hint that you have too
much stuff hooked up for the PSU.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Sorry missed the fact you ran the HDD diagnostic.

PSU is definately the next suspect. I've seen exactly what you describe happen when a PSU is putting out low voltage on the 5 volt bus. Just last week I had an 8RDA+ mobo with a perfectly good drive in it that was clunking and rebooting right after POSTing. 5 volt rail was reading 4.46 volts. Swapped the PSU and it ran like a champ.