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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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 Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 2:19 am Post subject: power surge and damage |
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My desktop was chugging merrily along this morning, but when I came back from work, the power was out. ( I think there may have been a series of outages in the neighborhood)
Anyway- now when I try to boot up, the monitor works, the computer beeps one regular beep ( good sign right?) the list of components comes up and then this:
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Searching for boot record from IDE-ok
disk read error- ctrl + alt+ del to reboot. |
needless to say, that hasn't worked.
I'm guessing the worst case scenario is a hard drive failure? How much are new ones going for these days anyway?
Edit: comp is windows based with a phoenix bios, about a year old, purchased in bits and assembled by a guy in Yongsan. ran perfectly til today. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:38 am Post subject: |
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Sounds like file corruption anyways...maybe a frazzled drive. You left it on while away? Hmmm....
Boot using the WinXP cd and use the recovery console (hitting R when it asks). IF and only IF you get the dos based screen AND you get something like:
1. C:\WINDOWS
Please choose which windows you want to use: 1
.... Or something like that. If you do, then type 1 and hit enter, it will ask for your administrator password which I hope you know .
Then at the command prompt enter: chkdsk /r
The /r switch tells chkdsk to scan the entire drive and recover any bad sectors. Depending on the size of your drive this could take a long time.
Once that is all said and done. Reboot the computer and you should not get the error.
The problem I believe lies in the file system. I think it's a bit technical...you may want to try converting the file system to FAT32...just try what I posted and report back. |
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redbird
Joined: 07 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 5:16 am Post subject: |
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| If you don't have a surge protector, you should get one to plug your computer into. |
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the saint
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
Location: not there yet...
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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| redbird wrote: |
| If you don't have a surge protector, you should get one to plug your computer into. |
SUrely if the power does surge, it's only going to kill the power supply. I have one nasty experience of this and that's exactly what happened. I was under the impression that the power supply, being a transformer, acts as a buffer between the delicate electronics and the mean old nasty outside world of power. Am I wrong?
But if the power supply has gone, you wouldn't get a beep out of the MB. |
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Gollum
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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Sometimes your Bios setting can get out of whack. Happens to me about every 6 months.
I think you hit F-10 on boot (or del?) to get into bios. Follow the on-screen instructions and see what the boot order for devices is. Maybe it's not looking for the hard drive or something because the settings got messed up. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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*sigh*
It could be that easy for once, couldn't it.....? |
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redbird
Joined: 07 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 5:25 am Post subject: |
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| the saint wrote: |
| redbird wrote: |
| If you don't have a surge protector, you should get one to plug your computer into. |
SUrely if the power does surge, it's only going to kill the power supply. I have one nasty experience of this and that's exactly what happened. I was under the impression that the power supply, being a transformer, acts as a buffer between the delicate electronics and the mean old nasty outside world of power. Am I wrong? |
You're wrong. You're right, too, but on the important point, you're mostly wrong.
Power surges can kill hard drives. I take care of over 300 computers in my line of work and we absolutely insist on our computers being plugged into surge protectors. This is a campus with a lot of old buildings and a couple years ago, we lost two hard drives at one location, one after the other, before I discovered that the intern who set up the computer had just plugged it into the wall. |
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Pangit
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Location: Puet mo.
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 5:36 am Post subject: |
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| I lost two 40 gig hard drives two years ago because of a power surge. I still don't have a surge protector. I think I should get one because this laptop seems to give me a little shock every so often. What's up with that, anyway? Trigem is crap. |
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the saint
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
Location: not there yet...
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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| redbird wrote: |
| the saint wrote: |
| redbird wrote: |
| If you don't have a surge protector, you should get one to plug your computer into. |
SUrely if the power does surge, it's only going to kill the power supply. I have one nasty experience of this and that's exactly what happened. I was under the impression that the power supply, being a transformer, acts as a buffer between the delicate electronics and the mean old nasty outside world of power. Am I wrong? |
You're wrong. You're right, too, but on the important point, you're mostly wrong.
Power surges can kill hard drives. I take care of over 300 computers in my line of work and we absolutely insist on our computers being plugged into surge protectors. This is a campus with a lot of old buildings and a couple years ago, we lost two hard drives at one location, one after the other, before I discovered that the intern who set up the computer had just plugged it into the wall. |
ah... thanks for setting me straight |
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TJ
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 9:29 pm Post subject: Power surges can be good |
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Many years ago while I was in Australia a power surge killed my fax machine. The electricity authority had been getting lots of bad publicity and didn't want any more so ................. they asked me if I would mind if they replaced my old fax with a new one.
Of course I didn't object.
What they didn't know was that my old fax was very old and had only cost me AU$40. The free replacement fax was worth AU$550.
Was I happy ? I most certainly was !!!!
By the way, all my electronic gear is now protected by surge protectors. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 1:47 am Post subject: |
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| Similar situation as it turns out. The power company sent someone by this afternoon who took my puter off to be repaired. He thinks it's gonna need to be reformated, in which case, I'll get a legit version of Windows (made sure to ask for English) |
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keninseoul
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:30 pm Post subject: surge protectors |
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if u want REAL surge protection get a GOOD surge supressor - with a VARISTOR.
The cheaper ones just have a choke & cap fillter to reduce spikes - reduce, not stop. |
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rumpolestitskin
Joined: 12 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:48 pm Post subject: |
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| If you want good surge protection why not just buy a UPS, that should I think level out the power even when it's not surging. |
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