Hard drive not seen by BIOS

[RPsx94]

I had a problem with my computer tonight that has me rather puzzled as to what is causing it.

My computer is (now) a dual boot system that has PClinux on a SATA drive and Windows 7 on a PATA/IDE drive I was using before. It is setup to see and boot the SATA drive 1st and boot into Windows if I want, but tonight the computer would only boot into Windows. I did not have this problem before, and I checked my SATA cables *twice* to make sure they were connected.

My girlfriend is on Win7 under her account browsing the internet (with Firefox) Hitting up places like "Lands End" and her Yahoo mail, when some McAfee adviser comes up and causes the computer to freeze. The problem here is that she has a normal account (non-administrative) so she has to input an administrative password to install anything (same with my account)., so I haven't the slightest idea *HOW* that program got on there. We both did Control+Alt+Del and it did not bring up task manager, I had to manually shut down the computer via holding the power button.

For the issue that bugs me the most and one in the subject.  The HDD that has/had Win7 on it does not show up in BIOS, and the computer takes 4x longer to even go into BIOS than it normally does. On top of that, when that IDE drive is plugged in, the computer will not boot into anything else...no other HDD, not even a LiveCD.  Even though my BIOS is set to check a optical drive first, then boot from the SATA drive.

Did this HDD fail?  I can't understand why Windows messing up like that would cause the HDD to not be recognized by BIOS, and I certainly can't see why it would stop me from even using a LiveCD. At most I'd need to re-install, but the computer just sits at a black screen with a blinking white "_" when the HDD "loads".

Any help would be much appreciated.

[menotu]

Have you checked any Master / Slave options in your bios?

Also, in windows have you run "chkdsk.exe" to scan your HDD for problems?

Are you able to boot using your Win 7 DVD to  see whether it can "repair" any faults or is only the PCLos LiveCD thats not booting?  Would it be worth burning another PClos CD to try booting from that?

You may want to check that your memory sticks are embedded properly and haven't worked loose whilst the case was open as that can cause various problems.

[RPsx94]

My RAM shows up in BIOS normally (4gig) and PCLinux shows 3.5 gig like it should.  Plus I wasn't futzing with the RAM any tonight.

The IDE HDD does not show up at all. Nothing. BIOS says there is nothing IDE hooked up when it is plugged in.  My SATA drive and my DVD drives (both SATA) show up normally.

And when I have that IDE drive hooked up, it will not read from the DVD-drives at all, doesn't even check them. Boots right from the HDD after a unusually long startup POST screen.  There is even a long delay when going into BIOS.

The thing is, it was doing this "only boot from the IDE drive and nothing else" *BEFORE* I had the problem in Win7.  That is what led to my GF using Windows...Linux was not booting up first like it should have. I thought it was some loose SATA cables (I had them unplugged) I checked them *twice* and rebooted after each check and it still went to Windows.

[T6]

you could change both ide and sata cables, ide is very delicate and can fail without any intervention of the user, sata cna break itself if you twisted the cable

also try with another psu, i had to change mine because the system wouldn't turn on if i had the hard disk at ide connected to the psu, after the change the system boots ok

are those drives old? sometimes S.M.A.R.T. is disable so it won't warn about any possible problem with the drive and the drive could be just saying good bye

hard disks can fail after 1 year of use 

[Old-Polack]

My RAM shows up in BIOS normally (4gig) and PCLinux shows 3.5 gig like it should.  Plus I wasn't futzing with the RAM any tonight.

The IDE HDD does not show up at all. Nothing. BIOS says there is nothing IDE hooked up when it is plugged in.  My SATA drive and my DVD drives (both SATA) show up normally.

And when I have that IDE drive hooked up, it will not read from the DVD-drives at all, doesn't even check them. Boots right from the HDD after a unusually long startup POST screen.  There is even a long delay when going into BIOS.

The thing is, it was doing this "only boot from the IDE drive and nothing else" *BEFORE* I had the problem in Win7.  That is what led to my GF using Windows...Linux was not booting up first like it should have. I thought it was some loose SATA cables (I had them unplugged) I checked them *twice* and rebooted after each check and it still went to Windows.

Different BIOS show different things in different places. Besides the section where you choose device boot order, (cdrom, floppy, hard drive) there is usually a separate place to choose which hard drive is the boot drive, and yet another place to choose boot IDE or SCSI/SATA first. You need to check for all three, and each time you disconnect a drive, the BIOS resets your choices back to an earlier default, so with each change you need to go back into BIOS to reset things as you want them.

[Wildman]

I would remove the Mcafee program. I hav efound his to be a somewhat major problem latel.
They apparently have a conflict somewhere in the latest upgrade,  Sunbelt software
Vipre works much better and is more secure than any I've found in the last 2 years.
I also have run into a bad SATA cable or two lately. This can cause some really weird things with the drives...

[RPsx94]

The problem with the McAfee program is that I never installed it. I installed the MS security essentials for Anti-Virus, and my GF's account does not have permission to install anything without inputting a password for the "main" account (Root-like setup). But that might be a minor issue.

I'll double check the SATA & IDE cable and see if either are causing problems. I dunno why I didn't think about the IDE cable as a possible problem. 

[Wildman]

The problem with the McAfee program is that I never installed it. I installed the MS security essentials for Anti-Virus, and my GF's account does not have permission to install anything without inputting a password for the "main" account (Root-like setup). But that might be a minor issue.

I'll double check the SATA & IDE cable and see if either are causing problems. I dunno why I didn't think about the IDE cable as a possible problem. 

That sounds all most like a outside source (bug, virus, ect ) trying to invade the system..Do you know what the McAfee adviser said?

[RPsx94]

It might have said something about scanning or starting up.  I didn't really pay attention as I was more annoyed that it was freezing up, and that McAfee was on there when I did not install it. The last three things I installed on that drive were Security Essentials, Nvida Drivers for my 9000GT car, & Office 2007 Enterprise.  The Office disc did not say a thing about having McAfee on it at all.

I'm not so worried about the McAfee thing, reinstalling/fixing my install is possible.  What I can't understand is why the drive just flat out doesn't work, aside from making the computer always boot to it. I've changed cables, I put the drive in an external enclosure and it does nothing. I even put the HDD that was originally in the enclosure back in and tested it that way, it popped up in PCLinux normally.

My computer works 100% normal when that drive is not hooked up. Boots normal, reads LiveCD's normally, nothing messes up.

I did a Google search for "hard drive crash symptoms", and it mentions something about the drive not being seen by the bios as one of them, so I'm seriously guessing that is what happened. 

[Was_Just19]

I would be inclined to reset the BIOS ......  just in case.

Then scan the Win HDD from a live CD for Win viruses etc.

Check the drive for mechanical integrity.

I might even be inclined to wipe the MBR/Partition Table and rebuild it, to ensure nothing was lurking there.

regards.

[Wildman]

I still think maybe you have had a invasion of sorts. The McAfee thing, may be a clue.

Go here,  Trend Micro, and run the live scanner program (free) see if that helps any. 

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

[Crow]

When you install Flash in Windows the page tries to install McAfee as a default.

[RPsx94]

Now that you said that, I do remember her asking to install Flash. That explains the why of McAfee.


I'm honestly starting to think the HDD just gave up, and the McAfee/black screen thing was a minor thing that is unrelated.

[T6]

the steps to verify if the hard disk gave up are simple, do a backup of the information and then do a full low level format

the tool dban

http://www.dban.org/download

can help you, it will disappear all the information on your hard disk so it is important to backup first, sometimes the partition and the mbr creates weird errors that you need to start from 0 to get real results again

this toll, you can find it on other livecds for system recovery tools, most of them multiboot linux tools

another good tool could be the manufacturer tool to verify the hard disk integrity, if it goes ok, you can start working on it again but if after the steps i mentioned the system keeps behaving weird and you hear the hard disk working more than usual or more noisy that normally is, time to replace it

[RPsx94]

I'd use that tool or the one that came with the HDD, but I still have the issue of it (the faulty drive) doesn't let my computer read/boot from the CD drive.

Plus I can't access the HD. Internal, external the drive just sits there. It powers up, but it doesn't load up anything.