My computer died today. It won't boot. I'm not real good with this shit, but I lost several pieces of music I'm working on.
I'm trying to be zen about it. I may be able to boot from a USB stick and access the hard drives that are there...
But if not, I'm willing to accept my fate. It was an old computer. I knew better to operate wothout a backup.
Fuck.
My condolences, fren.
All is not lost, save the ssd/hdd, chances are the data will be intact. If not there are data recovery services. Not cheap, but maybe worth it depending on how important the data is to you. Best of luck recovering everything
Take out the hard drive and use a USB to HDD cable to recover your files, but that requires Linux experience. I'd say take it to a computer shop but you need to be careful with those since they need to be trusted enough not to search for Bitcoin seeds. You never know these days. I'd just find a trusted friend or keep the HDD until you find a trusted friend.
I've always wanted to start a computer shop but with taxation and property taxes and overpriced real estate you end up slaving away never making any worthwhile money.
I have some Linux experience. What's the process look like?
The easiest process to start is since you said the computer won't boot. That means it must be a problem with the power supply or motherboard.
So just take out the hard drive from the broken computer and put it in a working computer. Make sure the working computer only has your hard drive from the broken computer. Then boot the computer. It should boot normally. That will let us know if the hard drive is still working, or it will give us a different error. We want to know if the hard drive is fried. That's a way to find out what's wrong.
Yeah. It started with a bad cmos battery... it had been bad for some time, but would still boot with an error message. Then I had a power out and when I restarted the computer... no boot.
The computer actually has 2 hard drives. Neither will boot now.
I am able to get into bios settings. I also replaced the cmos battery... to no avail.
Won't boot.
I'm hopeful/optimistic that the hdd with my music files is still good.
I was able to boot from a USB stick with Linux Mint, but once booted, I was only able to see 1 hdd (and unfortunately not the one I was hoping to find).
The hdd that shows up also has Mint installed. The hdd that doesn't show has Windows 10. Not sure if that matters.
I really hope its fine.
The windows HDD won't show up on Linux because you need to mount the hhd first, by mounting I mean using a command to attach them hard drive software terms
but you can check with the following command to see if Linux detects the HDD, no need to mount, it just tells you if it detects a hhd
sudo fdisk -l
it will show you all the hard drives attached to your computer. that way we can troubleshoot to see if the hhd is dead or not
or you can just take the windows hhd and put it in a different computer and boot the computer
So... sudo fdisk -| give me this:
> (and a flashing cursor) ???
the last character is a small L
you put that long character under the backspace which I don't know the actual name
OK. Well... it only displays the 1 Linux drive. :(
What you can try next is boot the computer into the bios mode and look to see if the computer detects the windows hard drive from the bios.
You can also check both sides of the cable of where the windows drive is plugged into, sometimes it's a lose cable or try a different sata port or sata cable.
Still many troubleshooting you can try. It's not easy.
Bios doesn't detect either hdd :(
is it a hdd or ssd? if hdd, can you feel the disk spinning when it's on?
Try connecting the cable of the hard drive into a different port in the mother board, or try connecting it to the main hard drive port so you can see again if it detects the drive.
find a different computer and plug the windows hhd to see if it detects the hard drive on that computer.
if none of that works, might be a dead drive but don't throw it out , because there is other ways to test but would need someone to physically test it using tools
Its an hdd. It spins. All cables are secure. I unplugged and replugged it in just in case. No luck.
I am noticing that the main fan isn't turning on as I mess with the computer... despite heat sink that it's mounted on getting warm/hot.
Maybe it's a power supply issue? But the hdd does spin, so I assume it's getting power.
The only thing I can think of is plug the broken hhd into a different computer and try those same troubleshooting we just tried. That will tell us if a working computer can detect it or same issue as now.
The HDD is getting power which is good but the cable that reads the data plugs into a chipboard on the HDD. Sometimes when a hdd gets fried that chipboard is the one that gets fried and the disk still spins. I had 2 identical hdd, one fried so I swapped the HDD chipboard and it worked.
There's not a whole lot else we can do, If you have computers friends with tools, they can inspect it more using a USB to hhd dock.
OK. So.... my 2nd hdd is connected via a pci card (my terminology may be off) that I added to the back of the computer because it only had 1 slot on the motherboard.
I unplugged the main hdd, and plugged the 2nd one in here and it booted! This is the hdd with Linux (not the one I want to rescue) but it show that the computer port on the motherboard works.
I'm going to use this same cable to plug in the 1st hdd (windows). Maybe its just a cable failure?
Yea it's possible it's the cable. You can look at the port edge sometimes they wear down.
I have some of those card. PCI and PCIe to plug more hard drives.
You can also try unplugging the whole PCI card and only plug in the hard drive to the main hhd port on the motherbaord.
Sometimes the card takes priority over the main HDD port.
Damn. No luck. I just get the message "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in selected device and press a key"
Ya that's not a good sign after all the troubleshooting we've done. It sounds like a dead HDD chipboard.
But don't throw it out. If you have a friend get him to do troubleshooting with external tools like usb to hhd docks or other tests. You might be able to recover your data someday.
Ty for all your help bro.
I think you'd do quite well with a computer repair shop. Even in a high-tac local.
You very efficiently helped me narrow my problems to the root. I'm willing to bet 100 to 1 that the HDD chipboard is indeed the problem.
Ya it's a strange problem, makes me wonder why would it fry in the first place or maybe it's as simple as the hard drive is old.
I had a power out. My computer was connected via power surge device, but that was the catalyst to the problem.
Probably a shitty power strip advertised as something more than it was truly capable of.
Something like that happened to me because I bought a powerstrip from a second hand store. I never realized how important they are and buying used ones you don't know the history of how they were used. Losing a hard drive sucks because hard to backup everything right away
Ya. many people don't have time to fix computers, so it's in demand up here especially with the older people. Hopefully someday I can open my shop.
ty for the big zap. here is a song i celebrated with
I suppose, theoretically, since I can still get into bios settings, that I could boot the same computer from the hdd with a usb/hdd cable (assuming the hdd isn't fried).
I am confirmed able to boot from a usb drive after changing the boot order.
