I Need Help With Misbehaving PC

[Dah-Henny]

THANKS in advance for any advice

Dell Dimension 8200

I can't get it to stay on for more than 15 minutes. Been trying all morning just to get it to boot.

1. I hit the power on button & I hear clicking from the hard drive.
2. Every now and then a screen shows a failure at checkpoint CRT, or PWrd, or SIZE, or POKE, or krst, or Kybd.
3. I finally get it to boot, and I get pop-ups telling me new found hardware such as disk drive and storage device. It even had the wrong time display.
4. It works perfectly for 10 or 15 minutes & then just shuts down without warning.
5. I have to unplug it just to get the unit off. It won't even respond to a power button shutdown.
6. A few days ago I defragged, also restored back 2 months in an effort to rectify.

• HD going bad?
• Virus? scan shows nothing...ZA Security Suite

1. My whole life is on this unit and should have back-up, but don't.

Thanks Again!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mdvalenz]

It sounds like the HD is going bad but it could be the motherboard if those failures are right. The easiest way to test is if you have another computer. Remove the HD from this computer and put it into the other one as a slave drive, the second HD, so the other computer still boots from its HD. If it boots fine then you know it isn't the HD. If this HD is the problem then the other computer will tell you. You can also check this computer by removing the HD and booting into a Linux Live CD, like knoppix. If it runs fine then it is likely the HD.

I had a HD fail a few months ago and was lucky to be able to use Knoppix to read the failing drive and transfer most of the content to another drive. It didn't get everything since some files were corrupted, but it got most of the files. The important thing is to remove the HD now and check with a live cd. The longer a failing HD is being used the less likely you can recover anything from it.

If the problem is the motherboard, which could be the problem since the OS keeps losing the HD connection. Then there isn't anything you can really do but replace the motherboard which can be difficult. If you are able and your computer is just a store bought standard model, you can just buy a new computer, or if this one is under warranty get this one fixed. Then put this HD in the new computer and transfer your files over. Be careful if you use a warranty repair because they would want your HD in the computer and they might reinstall the OS erasing the contents.

 

[Jared Twomey]

if it were me, i would get another hard drive, put it in the machine, install windows on it. Then put the old hard drive in as a secondary drive, and pull all of the info you need off of it
sounds to me like its dieing

 

[dfergie]

I cloned the drive on this pc about a year or so ago, and have had IE crashing recently, booted from the clone drive and going to update and run it now...

 

[Dah-Henny]

Excuse my ignorance, but how exactly do I hook up 2 HD's. Do I need some kind of adapter plug? If I can pry one of my son's pc's away from him, I can do this.
THANKS!!!

 

[thecristman]

Excuse my ignorance, but how exactly do I hook up 2 HD's. Do I need some kind of adapter plug? If I can pry one of my son's pc's away from him, I can do this.
THANKS!!!

There should already be an extra cable inside the computer to hook an extra drive to, including a power cable. Just make sure that you set the old drive to slave and then start up the new compueter and it should recognize it.

 

[Dah-Henny]

Thanks!...Am I correct in assuming that after it's hooked up, I go into set-up after I power on, and make the necessary drive order???

 

[Dah-Henny]

Thanks for all of the advice, folks. I tried to fire the pc up tonight with no luck. I hit the power button and all I get is a yellow blinking light on the button (it's usually green). I did a little research and decided to try a new PSU. I borrowed one out of another computer. It didn't fit, so I hooked it up loosely. The unit appeared to fire right up, green light and no HDD clicking. I wasn't close enough to the monitor to test, but I am pretty confident that the PSU was/is the problem.

You can bet your bippie that I'll back up my stuff when I get the new PSU.

 

[Foxbat]

While you have the case open, check out the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard. They appear as plastic-coated aluminum cans with an "X" or "K" scribed on the top. Look for any brown or tan residue around the base or on the top, or look to see if the ends are bulged. Either of these would be evidence that the cap has failed and needs to be replaced.

Here's the picture I took of my HP D325 that had the problem: http://www.satelliteguys.us/attachment.php?attachmentid=17276&d=1182633622

 

[Dah-Henny]

I'll have a look-see...Thanks Foxbat.

 

[Dah-Henny]

Final Update

I thought I'd give the conclusion of the matter if anyone is interested.

As it turns out, it was indeed the PSU failing on my desktop. I have never heard of one failing that way before though. After re-powering the unit, I seemed to have lost my floppy drive and cdrw drive. I found a loose wire that I forgot to connect on the cdrw drive (duh!), and that problem was corrected.

The A drive was still lost though, so I started reading through Microsoft Knowledgebase until I found something about making a registry change, which I did, and the A drive re-appeared and functioned. Ran the scandisk feature, which turned out clean.

I have my back-ups now and all is well in Hooterville. Thank you all who replied.