@#$!% notebook hdd

[stupid_tech_geek]

My wife fuukked up her notebook (wouldn't shut down IMMEDIATELY so she kept clicking the power button. DUH) and i've had a devil of a time tracking down the problem. At first I thought it was the battery but now I think she might have a bad sector on her hdd. When I try to reinstall windows the machine usually shuts off during the install. It's really strange because there's no discernable pattern it follows. You can see why I thought it might be a power problem. Anyway I'm thinking it was writing to the disk before she started messing with it, thus the bad sector theory. Since the notebook doesn't have a floppy drive I ordered an ide adapter so I could plug it into my computer and test it. When I boot up and go into fdisk to wipe the drive I get " No fixed drive detected". I'm trying real hard not to go drop 150.00 on a new drive (rather spend that money on a new vid card he he) but she's using my comp now and it's driving me crazy. Got to fix this before she finds all the nudie pix on there. Any suggestions are much appreciated. Thx

Homer: Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman.

 

[stupid_tech_geek]

Yeah the adapter came with a 5v molex which I connected. Do you think it's the hdd or the battery. I'm only buying 1 and I want to make sure my theory is correct before I spend the cash. Leave it to an end user to @#$ up a perfectly good notebook.

Homer: Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman.

 

[stupid_tech_geek]

Yeah, I thought about that but it doesn't have those pins. The adapter converts it from 40 pins to 44 which is standard for ide. Bummer though. It would be nice if it was something as simple as that.

Homer: Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman.

 

[sjonnie]

<i>>No fixed drive detected</i>

As your computer isn't detecting the drive, but the laptop is, it seems reasonable to assume that it sin't the drive that is broken but the adaptor that isn't working.

<i>>Since the notebook doesn't have a floppy drive</i>

Run the windows install program but go into the console. You can run all sorts of crap from there, fdisk, chkdsk etc. Better still, get the hard disk analysis software from the hard disk manufactuer's website and run their analysis on it. If there is a bad block it should be able to mark it as bad and ignore it.

<i>>When I try to reinstall windows the machine usually shuts off during the install. It's really strange because there's no discernable pattern it follows</i>

That doesn't sound like a hard disk problem to me. When you do the windows install do you do a complete format of the drive? If there are problems with the drive they should show up then or during the install it might say something like failed to copy [filename].

 

[stupid_tech_geek]

I assumed it was a hard disk problem because of the way she shut the computer down(ie. rapidly clicking the power button because the machine doesn't shut down RIGHT AWAY)while it was saving data. I could be wrong though (certainly wouldn't be the first time). When I reinstalled XP I didn't do the quick format because I expected something might be wrong with the hdd. If there was an error message I didn't see it. I've tried to install XP about 6 or 7 times. I even tried Linux to no avail. I don't think it's a battery issue. I also tried it without a battery while drawing power from the charger cord. When I get home I'll try the concole and report back.

Homer: Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman.