Harddrive failing, cant get onto desktop

[Tommywx]

Hello

Recently my computer forced a chkdsk on startup because of a forced shutdown. When I finally got onto the desktop It was running painfully slow. The internet told me its my hard drive giving up the ghost. I heard clicking noises inside my pc, it sounded like pressing a button and it was every 30ish seconds

After trying to repair with f9 on startup, it loads past windows and now it's just stuck on a black screen with NY mouse which I can still move. It still forces a chkdsk but now it loads into a black screen and I can't do anything except move my mouse.

As of today, I borrowed an 80giga windows xp hard drive from my dads decade old PC and installed it to try and get on my PC, and it bluescreens halfway through loading into windows xp and restarts. My vga is plugged into my nividia card, could that be the problem?

Can someone please help me or tel me what to do. My PC is windows 7 which it came with. Should I buy a new hard drive? The new harddrive I have doesn't make any noises or anything. I don't have a CD I can burn anything too or a reset CD or anything.

 

[Tommywx]

I've been told my new hdd won't start because of driver issues but I can't install new drivers because I don't have any reformat disk and I can't access the desktop

 

[Dustybin]

If you want to use the old hard drive you need to reinstall windows 7 on it properly. You can't just take a hdd out of a completely different PC and plug it in and expect it to boot. If you have a windows 7 CD you can boot from that and clean install Windows 7, if this is an off the shelf PC then most likely this isn't an option as the restore information might be stored in a partition on the damaged original hdd.


You can create a bootable USB stick and install windows 7 with that, entering your product key when prompted after fresh installing windows 7 onto your PC. Instructions for making the disk are fairly simple but you will need access to a working computer to download the file and create the stick.


You might be better just buying a new HDD as it certainly sounds like yours is broken and 80gb is very small for use today anyway, however you would still need to setup windows on the drive.

 

[nukemaster]

Do you have another computer that can take your failing drive. You may be able to recover files that way.

You need to stop playing with the failing drive until you are ready to recover. These things tend to get worse and worse over time.

This is one reason backup is so important(on drive failure sometimes very important files can be lost).

You can get a Windows 7 iso image to burn to a DVD from here.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows7

8.1 is here.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows8

!0 is here.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

That takes care of Windows. You system makers website(HP/Acer/Dell/ect) will have the required drivers for the system.

 

[Tommywx]

Sadly I don't have another PC to plug anything into. The o KY PC I have is up my dads and it's a decade old but never used.

If I just bought a brand new hdd would it just work with my PC?

 

[vjekoslav]

Try to plug different PSU cable into HDD and also try different SATA port on the mobo.

 

[nukemaster]

Sadly I don't have another PC to plug anything into. The o KY PC I have is up my dads and it's a decade old but never used.

If I just bought a brand new hdd would it just work with my PC?

If you want to use the new hard drive disconnect the old one and install Windows(you will have to install because you do not seem to have recovery discs and if it was a partition it is on the failing drive.).

Along with installing Windows you will have to install drivers(from the system maker or part makers website) as well as software you installed on the system(recovery discs normally have all this stuff on them already).

Once installed you can try to recover files by powering down and connecting the old drive. You may have to enter the bios to tell the system to boot from the new hard drive and not revert to trying to start the old one.

From here Windows may be able to see the drive and you will be able to attempt file recovery. Depending on your settings you may need to take ownership of folders on the old drive(Windows makes this easy now and may even do some of it for you.).

 

[Tommywx]

I'm so lost atm. I don't mind losing my data on my old PC I can download them again it's nothing special on there.

I just want my PC to boot but I don't K of what to do. Will I need to buy a new hard drive? If I do, will it work at all or will I need to Dow load drivers off another PC or sonething. I would t even Know what drivers to download etc

 

[nukemaster]

If the drive has failed, you will need a new one. You could check the drive health in another system, but you seem to be fresh out of those(if the old XP system has the ports and can see the failing drive, you may be able to run some tests or at least see the drives health data. XP is not exactly up to dealing with the newest hardware, but drives under 2TB[maybe even larger, never tested this] may work if the system bios supports it).

You will have to install Windows and load drivers from the PC that had the old drive. Windows can be downloaded from the MS links above. Drivers will come from the system makers website.

On most systems installing Windows is easy, you just drop the disk in the DVD drive and it will start the installation. It will ask you some questions to help you install it. Once installed you have to install the drivers. It is best to get these on another system and bring them over on a flash drive(or external hard drive) or CD/DVD.

Windows will also have to get a pile of updates. This is a bit time consuming, but it is just how these things work.

Pre-built systems normally have the ability to make recovery media. If you did this when the system was new, you may have some burned DVD's or a flash drive that you can use to install reinstall Windows and your required drivers(with the any updates and software the system came with.)

While not free, companies(HP/Dell/Ect) also tend sell recovery media for systems(in case the original is lost.).