Help Diagnose my PC Woes

WombaT

Northern Ireland26238 Posts

January 15 2014 23:59 GMT

Ok, I am not completely computer illiterate, although quite close to it sometimes when it comes to hardware issues.

Basically my spare (Starcraft exclusive for the most part) PC has packed in and refuses to boot. It was a very rudimentary job, with minimal RAM and a spare HD of mine, which I was going to upgrade anyway whenever I got the cash. As I am currently without cash for another day or two, I'd like to just rule out certain hardware faults before I add a decent hard drive into the bay.

Over the course of the last two days it has veered between not registering the hard drive at all, to it at least appearing when I go into the diagnostic place or whatever it is. I'm mostly used to Macs, so there might be something retardedly simple I've overlooked.

I have to play/cast the prestigious Team Liquid Live Report Starleague this weekend as well, so anything that would help me out would be greatly appreciated.

I've uploaded some pics I took on my rather ropey smartphone, in vaguely chronological order. It's flipping between not registering the drive and trying to boot through the CD drive, to registering the hard drive, but stalling at a certain stage and not booting up at all.

Pics Here

Thanks in advance anyone who has any ideas,
Wombat

skyR

Canada13817 Posts

January 16 2014 00:24 GMT

It's likely the drive is on its death bed if it isn't recognized in BIOS. Though it might be the SATA port as well so have you tried switching it to another SATA port?

wptlzkwjd

Canada1240 Posts

January 16 2014 01:30 GMT

Have you tried installing another HD and testing that?

Also, there's LRSL this weekend? o.O I thought the group stages were done already.

Darkhorse

United States23455 Posts

January 16 2014 01:43 GMT

On January 16 2014 10:30 wptlzkwjd wrote:
Have you tried installing another HD and testing that?

Also, there's LRSL this weekend? o.O I thought the group stages were done already.

EU mate

WombaT

Northern Ireland26238 Posts

January 16 2014 16:55 GMT

I don't have one to install at present, it would be useful though just even to try and isolate the issue and make sure theres not an issue with the SATA ports. I tried moving it to another and still no luck, I am pretty sure it's the drive being fucked but want to make 100% sure before buying another

Ropid

Germany3557 Posts

January 16 2014 17:47 GMT

You mentioned that's some sort of spare PC, so that means you have another one? You could use a second PC to see if the drive is broken or not. Connect it as an additional drive and then look at what shows up in Disk Management, what it does if you access its partitions, and what some sort of drive health diagnostics software says about it. You can also use a second PC to try to copy and rescue the drive's contents onto the new drive you'll buy.

WombaT

Northern Ireland26238 Posts

January 17 2014 00:11 GMT

Finally got there, one of the connections from the motherboard to the SATA ports or whatever they're called wasnt working so was able to swap that out after testing another functional drive of my friends in it

Thanks for the advice, made it a lot easier for me

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