My computer will not boot up

[tayloryellow]

I was on my desktop yesterday and shut it down in the normal manner and then later on in the day went to go back on it and it came up with the screen that the computer did not shut down properly - did I want to start normally, start in safe mode etc I pressed to start normal it went to boot ini screen and my computer is making a grating noise and then it goes back to the same screen that the computer did not shut down properly and I cannot seem to get it to do anything else - does anyone please have any suggestions as to what can be wrong. Thanks Kim

 

[raybay]

Name your brand and model, as well as the hard ware configuration: hard drive brand, model, size; memory installed, optical drives installed, CPU if known, operating system... It will be important to know the age of the hard drive, optical drive, and history of the memory modules.

 

[tayloryellow]

Information - Is this what you are after

Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600) MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD MS-7181 1.00
Enclosure Type: Desktop
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
1.60 gigahertz AMD Sempron
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD MS-7181 1.00
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 11/03/2005
Drives Memory Modules c,d
41.10 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
25.90 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4167B [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]
Maxtor 6K040L0 [Hard drive] (41.11 GB) -- drive 0, s/n K12Q73XG, rev NAR61HA0, SMART Status: Healthy 1216 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot 'A0' has 512 MB
Slot 'A1' has 8192 MB
Local Drive Volumes

 

[raybay]

Based on our shop records, it is very likely that your Maxtor drive has gone bad. It is certainly old enough and has a history of early failure.
If it were my computer, I would replace the drive and the HL optical drive.
Also, your memory doesn't check out as listed. I suspect you have a typo someplace.
It may be possible to put the failing Maxtor into an external USB enclosure to see if you can rescue your data... should that be desirable... but even that is questionablr because of the "grating" noise you report which is usually indicative of a cracked plate or a failed bearing in the drive.

 

[tayloryellow]

Thank you

Thank you for your help - I thought as much that it was on it's way out. The reason for the memory - is I upgraded my memory myself a while ago - so that is correct. Thanks again

 

[raybay]

Thanks for the reply. The memory, as listed, cannot be correct, which is why I thought it was a typo.