Defragged Hard Drive, now won't boot

[RandomActPG]

So I attempted to defrag my boot drive using AVG's PC TuneUp and, of course, had to reboot to do so. I let it reboot and start working away. When I left it said 27% and when I got back hours later it was stuck at the "Press F2 or Del to enter setup" Bios screen. It was completely locked up (Del and F2 did nothing), so I hard-restarted and got nothing. Not even as far as BIOS. The monitor turns on and displays a blank screen.

If I disconnect the boot drive it WILL boot (and not find an OS) so it seems to be a problem with that drive.

Any reason why a drive would not allow the computer to even get as far as the bios screen?

 

[ronintexas]

If the hard drive is failing SMART (POST checks the drives before it boots to the OS), then it could be the problem.

Have you experienced any issues with the drive and/or system before?

 

[Lmah]

How old is this hard drive and was it loud when doing a lot of random reads? If so defragging could have killed it if it was near the end of its lifespan... Or your OS just somehow corrupted, but that seems pretty random.

 

[Dogsnake]

Did you run the entire tuneup set of utilities or only defrag?

 

[RandomActPG]

If the hard drive is failing SMART (POST checks the drives before it boots to the OS), then it could be the problem.

Have you experienced any issues with the drive and/or system before?

No issues with the drive previously. It's only about a year old and has been running fine.

Would SMART failure cause it to halt before the bios screen? With it connected I can't even force boot to another drive

 

[RandomActPG]

Did you run the entire tuneup set of utilities or only defrag?

The whole shebang, but everything else was completed without a reboot.

 

[RandomActPG]

How old is this hard drive and was it loud when doing a lot of random reads? If so defragging could have killed it if it was near the end of its lifespan... Or your OS just somehow corrupted, but that seems pretty random.

About a year old and no random read noises yet. Even now when I boot with it attached I can barely hear it read before it gives up

 

[Lmah]

I would just probably take the loss of your files and reformat it with a clean install of your OS.. Sounds like your drive didn't die and probably won't die anytime soon, but sometimes if you have a power bump in your house while defragging it will cause issues, not sure if you had one or not but that could be the problem.

 

[Dogsnake]

Be aware that the AVG utility makes changes to your file system, registry and other areas of your data. I would bet it broke your system. Not that it helps now but these type of "tune ups" are just useless and not needed. Also windows 7 and later versions have a built in defrag option that will run in the background and never need your attention. You may be able to get into the drive to recover data by creating a Linux based boot CD, other type of boot CD or by installing windows to a new drive as the boot drive. At the end of the day you will need to do a clean install and reinstall all your programs, games, hardware, drivers...on and on.