Diagnose my PC problem -BIOS or HD or what?

billyrox

billyrox

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So my father's pc has been acting strangely recently, and he called me over this morning to take a look at it. It is a 9 year old computer, and he is incredibly adverse to getting a new one because he rarely uses it.


There hasn't been much problems with it, and I have just helped him out with upgrades by installing a slave hard drive and a firewire port.

PROBLEM

So the last few days, he noticed that when he boots his computer up, it will recognize his mouse, keyboard, etc, but then it just hangs for about 20-25 seconds before it recognizes his Seagate HD.

I saw this for myself this morning when I stopped by.

Then it boots up, and its good.... I was concerned this morning, so I put in SeaTools, hard drive diagnosis program by seagate, and tested it. Both hard drives are running fine. So what is the problem?

Why is it taking long and longer for the computer to recognize the HD when it boots up in the morning? However, after I boot it up once, and if I reboot it again, then it immediately recognizes the HD.

Is there something wrong with the IDE cable, motherboard, or something else?

Any suggestions, let me have it. I'm ready to fix this mother.
 
Maybe it's possible that the hard drive now takes a longer time to power up and spin up? This problem is not uncommon among old HDs. Try opening up the case and listen to the HD as you power the computer on to see if there's any abnormal sound.

When you restart the computer the HD doesn't spin down, so maybe that's why when you restart the HD is recognized instantly.
 
Well it seems now that its definitely the hard drive.
But to make sure:
Is C: the startup volume (it should be)? - does the computer boot up into Windows at all?
 
Well it seems now that its definitely the hard drive.
But to make sure:
Is C: the startup volume (it should be)? - does the computer boot up into Windows at all?
 
It could also be the power supply. 9 years is a long time for one of those to last, and underpowering your HD could explain the slow spin-up times and eventual crash.

If you have another PC, try and throw those HDs in as a secondary drives. Save his data and trash the thing.
 
[quote name='qwerty1']if he uses it enough to complain about a problem like boot times then he uses it enough to justify getting a new one.[/quote]

:lol:

I wouldn't get a whole new computer just for a hard drive though. Actually, I had this exact same problem about a week ago. Fortunately, it wasn't the HD - just a loose data cable. I unplugged and replugged it back into my HD and then the PC booted up fine. I must've bumped it while I was in there working on something else.
 
Yeah, the hard drive crashed... i wiped it . and now i put the OS Antix on it. It runs smoothly,... i'm just waiting for the day that the hard drive completely dies.

i taught my dad the basic Firefox browser, and he has been using it fine for the last week. he just really checks his email , weather, and espn


2ndly.. i used a boot cd called knoppix to copy all his original hd data onto a usb hard drive
 
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