What is ailing my PC?

[swee'pea99]

Came in to find my screen looking like this:

This happened once before, a couple of months back, but a couple of reboots seemed to sort it and I thought (hoped) that was that. And now it's back.

Again, I've rebooted a couple of times, and again it seems to have overcome its hissy fit and found Windows and started up and all is well. But I remain nervous....

On a friend's advice I downloaded a diagnostic prog, which reported:

I think the 'no entry' sign over the logo at the top refers to the fact that this drive, unlike the other two in the machine, is not 'SMART-enabled' (don't ask me why). Anyway, the bit that caught my friend's eye was down at the bottom, where it says Disk sectors - 0.

Now, to retrace my steps a little, the last time this happened, one thing I did was to run a chkdsk /r on the drive. I can't remember whether it found errors and fixed them or whether it didn't find any errors, but either way, when I rang a final chkdsk it reported that the disk was in good health, thank you & good day.

So - any conclusions? My friend suggested that given the recent disk all-clear, maybe it's the motherboard that's going?

I'm going to run another chkdsk /r, but it'll only do that next time I reboot, which I'm not over-eager to do, for fear it returns to its dead state.

Any advice/suggestions/recommendations very much appreciated.

 

[MontyVeda]

Moribund C drive?

Do you have another hard drive you can pop in its place and install an operating system on?

 

[jefmcg]

Just to state the obvious - back up everything NOW!

 

[Racing roadkill]

Came in to find my screen looking like this:

View attachment 386022

This happened once before, a couple of months back, but a couple of reboots seemed to sort it and I thought (hoped) that was that. And now it's back.

Again, I've rebooted a couple of times, and again it seems to have overcome its hissy fit and found Windows and started up and all is well. But I remain nervous....

On a friend's advice I downloaded a diagnostic prog, which reported:

View attachment 386023

I think the 'no entry' sign over the logo at the top refers to the fact that this drive, unlike the other two in the machine, is not 'SMART-enabled' (don't ask me why). Anyway, the bit that caught my friend's eye was down at the bottom, where it says Disk sectors - 0.

Now, to retrace my steps a little, the last time this happened, one thing I did was to run a chkdsk /r on the drive. I can't remember whether it found errors and fixed them or whether it didn't find any errors, but either way, when I rang a final chkdsk it reported that the disk was in good health, thank you & good day.

So - any conclusions? My friend suggested that given the recent disk all-clear, maybe it's the motherboard that's going?

I'm going to run another chkdsk /r, but it'll only do that next time I reboot, which I'm not over-eager to do, for fear it returns to its dead state.

Any advice/suggestions/recommendations very much appreciated.

Sounds like a dry joint in the connection between the drive and the motherboard. Being handy with a soldering iron would be useful right about now.

 

[swee'pea99]

Sounds like a dry joint in the connection between the drive and the motherboard. Being handy with a soldering iron would be useful right about now.

Ooh - sounds interesting. I'm not exactly a whizz with a soldering iron, but I do have one and can use it. Would this be a relatively straightforward procedure? Ie, trace the cable back from the HD to the MB and re-solder where it joins?

Thanks for the other suggestions BTW - I'm backing up as I type (!) and although I don't have another disk to hand I'm sure I could get one off eBay for pennies. I only hesitate on account of that chkdsk all clear, which leads me to suspect that it's not the disk that's at fault.

 

[XC26]

Came in to find my screen looking like this:

View attachment 386022

This happened once before, a couple of months back, but a couple of reboots seemed to sort it and I thought (hoped) that was that. And now it's back.

Again, I've rebooted a couple of times, and again it seems to have overcome its hissy fit and found Windows and started up and all is well. But I remain nervous....

On a friend's advice I downloaded a diagnostic prog, which reported:

View attachment 386023

I think the 'no entry' sign over the logo at the top refers to the fact that this drive, unlike the other two in the machine, is not 'SMART-enabled' (don't ask me why). Anyway, the bit that caught my friend's eye was down at the bottom, where it says Disk sectors - 0.

Now, to retrace my steps a little, the last time this happened, one thing I did was to run a chkdsk /r on the drive. I can't remember whether it found errors and fixed them or whether it didn't find any errors, but either way, when I rang a final chkdsk it reported that the disk was in good health, thank you & good day.

So - any conclusions? My friend suggested that given the recent disk all-clear, maybe it's the motherboard that's going?

I'm going to run another chkdsk /r, but it'll only do that next time I reboot, which I'm not over-eager to do, for fear it returns to its dead state.

Any advice/suggestions/recommendations very much appreciated.

It looks like you have several (2 or more) physical hard disks configured as a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) volume and one of those physical hard disks has failed. Depending on the number of physical hard disks available to a computer and the particular RAID configuration, you can normally protect against physical hard disk failures at the cost of reduced capacity. (This is probably the main reason why someone might set up a RAID volume, particularly on a server). Another use of RAID volumes is simply to combine several small hard disks into one larger volume, without losing any capacity, and hence no failire protection. Now, RAID volumes can be either hardware or software controlled and managed. Hardware RAID should be handled by your computer BIOS or UEFI on newer hardware. Software RAID is setup from within a running OS and applied to other attached non-system disks.

When you power on your computer, is there an option to enter RAID configuration? It might be something like press F2 or Ctrl-M, or whatever, to enter the configuration utility (I really need to be there to help properly). The RAID configuration utility should allow you to view and configure your physical hard disks and RAID settings. You should at least be able to see what, if anything, is wrong. Obviously, don’t make any changes unless you know what you’re doing. Just see if any diagnostics are available.

 

[Tigerbiten]

You have a RAID array of two or more drives as your boot disk and one of them is failing.
Drive 1 not found: Serial ATA, SATA-1 <- this line tells which disk.
You won't find any bad sectors from within Windoze as it's reading info from the RAID array.
But you may find info on the bad drive if you boot off a CD.
I use tend to use 'the ultimate boot CD', but anything that boots linux from a CD will work.

One option is to break the RAID in the BIOS once you have everything backed up.
Then start from scratch reinstalling Windoze on a single disk.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks. The RAID stuff is, needless to say, over my head. But cutting to the chase, it is the disk that's gone bad (and even if it's managed to get into WEindows this time, it's only a question of time before it happens again). As a non-techy's solution, might my best option be to get a new HD, load Windows on it and take it from there?

 

[si_c]

Backup. Backup. Backup.

Who set your PC up in the first place? And why do you have a RAID array are important questions at this point. You have a RAID 0 array, which is where your data is split across in this case two physical disks. This means that it's twice as fast, and you have twice the storage space, but you have twice the possibility of losing all your data. If one drive goes, the data is all gone. Forever.

Western Digital have a diagnostics tool which should ignore the RAID array and allow you to SMART check the drives as well as perform other diagnostics. Worth downloading and running. You can't SMART check the RAID array as SMART is specific to the physical device.

 

[swee'pea99]

If one drive goes, the data is all gone. Forever.

Not to mention

Or to forget

As to your question, it was bought, as best I can recall, with just the main 500gb drive (with Windows 10 insider preview loaded). I'm pretty sure I added the two slave drives, to store music and photos. I've no idea who set it up originally, tho' the W10 IP would suggest someone who knew what they were about.

Again, trying to cut to my level, are you saying I don't have the option to simply swap out the dodgy drive for another, load up Win7, and Bob's my uncle?

(Thanks for the tip on the WD tool - I shall see if I can track that down. Having said which, it occurs to me that as in the OP 'this drive, unlike the other two in the machine, is not 'SMART-enabled' ') So presumably the WD tool won't be able to diagnose it either?)

 

[Tim Hall]

Sounds like a dry joint in the connection between the drive and the motherboard. Being handy with a soldering iron would be useful right about now.

Or any of a zillion other causes.

 

[User6179]

My old computer did this for a year, would boot usually on the third attempt, it started about the same time I installed Windows 10 on it.

 

[swee'pea99]

My old computer did this for a year, would boot usually on the third attempt, it started about the same time I installed Windows 10 on it.

That's interesting. Because the first time (and I think this time too) the crap hit the fan immediately following a W10 update. What happened after the year? Did it go phut?

 

[Andy_R]

Sounds like a dry joint in the connection between the drive and the motherboard. Being handy with a soldering iron would be useful right about now.

Just...no. Don't go poking around in there with a soldering iron unless you're extremely skilled and know for a fact that this is the issue. Mechanised soldering of surface mounted components now means that dry joints are pretty much a thing of the past nowadays. Even if it were the case, it would be quicker and easier to swap out the MB.

 

[User6179]

That's interesting. Because the first time (and I think this time too) the crap hit the fan immediately following a W10 update. What happened after the year? Did it go phut?

I bought a new HP Pavilion but the old computer was still working, strange thing was that if I turned the old machine off it would boot straight away if it was only switched off for 30-40 minutes, after 30-40 minutes it would take 3 or 4 attempts to boot.