Comp freeze at "Boot from CD/DVD"

[Wesablo]

Hey, I recently had a problem with my comp and after a few troubleshooting attempts it's still stuck. What happens is my comp boots regularly at first, but when it hits the "Boot from CD/DVD" section the cursor blinks a few times like it's going to continue, then disappears and the computer progresses no further.

Leading up to the problem:
When I startup sometimes one of my fans, be it HD or regular, makes a loud noise and the only way to fix it is to restart. The other day I started up, this happened, and I did a hard shutdown. Immediately after this, the problem started happening so I'm not sure if the problem is an improper shutdown, or maybe a virus? My MacAfree ran out a few weeks ago so I guess that's a possibility as well. Either way, the comp was working pretty perfectly before the hard reset.

The only things I've really tried is recovery console and chkdsk /r there. Please, any help/info would be greatly appreciated, as I feel this may be a small problem and I just don't know the fix atm.

Thanks,
~Wes

 

[mailpup]

Go into the BIOS and change the boot device order to hard drive first. That should eliminate the "Boot from CD/DVD" message. If it fails to boot properly after that, the hard drive could be failing but it's hard to be sure.

 

[Wesablo]

Ok tthanks mailpup, I tried that and the message did go away, but the same thing happened regardless at that screen....now that you mention the HD, I feel like that may be the problem, though I don't know how to test it out because I have 3 HDs. Should I unplug each one one at a time and try starting up? Or if its my main HD I guess I'm kinda screwed ey?

-edit: I tried unplugging each HDD but to no avail.

 

[Wesablo]

anyone, anything?

 

[mailpup]

What are you using your hard drives for? That is, one of them is for the operating system and what about the other two? The reason I'm asking is if they are just for storage, perhaps you can move the data off of one of the two hard drives and try installing Windows on it. If you are successful, that would point to the original "main" hard drive as having failed.

If so, you could then buy a replacement (or replace if still under warranty) to reinstall your OS onto and restore your storage hard drive. Or you can configure it in anyway you choose.

 

[Wesablo]

I'm beginning to think you're 100% right...the other 2 drives are yes for storage, though I had windows set up on one of them at one point.

Now my question is this: I've never really hooked up a harddrive with windows by myself (but I have my xp cds). Can I just, like you said, reinstall windows on a newly bought fresh drive and basically hook it up and go, or will there be any conflicts from my existing main drive? And also is there a link of a step by step in the forums or elsewhere anyone may know about that I could follow from a friends laptop, that shows how to do it? I'm assuming its relatively easy, but one thing I've learned is even the easy stuff can become difficult when it comes to fickle comps.


Edit: also I was wondering would a chkdsk /r in recovery console come back successfull even if the drive was burnt/broken? I ask because I ran chkdsk a few times and they always come back saying chkdk successful, files repaired or something like that.

Thanks again!

 

[mailpup]

Wouldn't the fresh drive be replacing the old main drive? If so, leave it disconnected or removed when you install the OS on the new hard drive and reconnect it afterward to save any data that might be on it. In fact, disconnect all but the new hard drive when installing Windows. Once you've saved any data, you can see if you can reformat the drive to use as storage or as a spare drive. If you have errors while formatting, I would just discard the drive.

There are lots of tutorials or guides on how to install Windows XP on the internet. There is even a guide in the Guides and Tutorials forum here at Techspot. Will the OS drive be a SATA hard drive? If so, there are some issues you need to be aware of so the installation proceeds without any hitches.

 

[Wesablo]

Ah ok I see. Yes it would be replacing the drive you're right, but I was hoping on keeping the info on it and the drive itself for storage. The main drive right now is SATA, so I guess I'm ok with that. The other thing I was wondering about was the chkdsk /r, I dunno if you saw my edit. Anytime I've run that its come back successful, yet it still doesn't bootup...is it still possible that the main drive is corrupt? Or does chkdsk not do much in terms of detecting physical hardware problems?

 

[mailpup]

If chkdsk repeatedly finds errors but repairs them, you have to ask why do these errors keep occurring? If chkdsk keeps finding errors, even though it supposedly repairs them, I wouldn't use the hard drive because in my view it would be unreliable and eventually it will fail completely. That said, once you have Windows reinstalled on the new hard drive, you can play around with the old main drive to determine its suitability to continue life in your PC.

BTW, you should have some kind of data backup strategy implemented to avoid loss of important data from any and all your hard drives.

One thing to be aware of when you install XP on a SATA hard drive is how to handle the SATA/RAID controller driver issues. Are you already familiar with this?

 

[Wesablo]

Well, no I'm not exactly familiar as someone installed my latest version for me, but I might be able to get that persons help again. I've never really had a data backup plan so I guess its possible I lost some data or will lose some, but I don't really know of how to go about that to be honest. I DO have those extra drives and possibly now my main 500gb one if I make the switch I guess.


As far as the harddrive I'm going to order a new one tomorrow and see if that will work out.

 

[mailpup]

Having a person help you who did it before is a big plus. You can always ask for help here as well but it will take longer due to the nature of forums. Even if you don't do it yourself, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at a couple of XP installation guides to familiarize yourself with the process.

You could use one of your other hard drives as storage for your backup data or you could burn rewritable DVDs or you could use an external USB hard drive. There are other options too.

 

[Wesablo]

Alright, well thank you for all the help I really do appreciate everything. Now I'll just check the new drive idea and see how it turns out.