Computer repair suggestion(s) (fixed)
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A friend asked me to try and fix her Windows computer. I found that the HDD was going/gone bad so a replacement was in order. I got the new drive in place as the master and moved the old drive in as slave. Now it was just a matter of booting up from a Windows XP disc, formatting the new drive, and installing the OS. This is the proverbial "cake walk" as I've done it dozens of times. Instead, I spent the next several hours trying to figure out why the CD drive would not work. With a disc in, it will spin up and down intermittingly. I thought it was the drive so I tried a working CD drive from one of my other computers. Same thing. I also tried three other IDE cables just to make sure that wasn't the problem. No luck. To rule out a failing power supply or a bad power connector, I tried several since the machine had lots of unused ones. No matter what I tried, I could not get the CD drive to read, or even recognize, the CD. It might spin up, but then it would always end up presenting me with the "Abort, Retry, or Fail" message. I tried another CD, too. The common denominator among all of these is the IDE controller itself, but I have no way of checking that. So, can you think of anything that I could try to help rectify this problem? Can the CD drive and the HDD share the same IDE cable? Thanks. - DC
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb
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A friend asked me to try and fix her Windows computer. I found that the HDD was going/gone bad so a replacement was in order. I got the new drive in place as the master and moved the old drive in as slave. Now it was just a matter of booting up from a Windows XP disc, formatting the new drive, and installing the OS. This is the proverbial "cake walk" as I've done it dozens of times. Instead, I spent the next several hours trying to figure out why the CD drive would not work. With a disc in, it will spin up and down intermittingly. I thought it was the drive so I tried a working CD drive from one of my other computers. Same thing. I also tried three other IDE cables just to make sure that wasn't the problem. No luck. To rule out a failing power supply or a bad power connector, I tried several since the machine had lots of unused ones. No matter what I tried, I could not get the CD drive to read, or even recognize, the CD. It might spin up, but then it would always end up presenting me with the "Abort, Retry, or Fail" message. I tried another CD, too. The common denominator among all of these is the IDE controller itself, but I have no way of checking that. So, can you think of anything that I could try to help rectify this problem? Can the CD drive and the HDD share the same IDE cable? Thanks. - DC
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb
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A friend asked me to try and fix her Windows computer. I found that the HDD was going/gone bad so a replacement was in order. I got the new drive in place as the master and moved the old drive in as slave. Now it was just a matter of booting up from a Windows XP disc, formatting the new drive, and installing the OS. This is the proverbial "cake walk" as I've done it dozens of times. Instead, I spent the next several hours trying to figure out why the CD drive would not work. With a disc in, it will spin up and down intermittingly. I thought it was the drive so I tried a working CD drive from one of my other computers. Same thing. I also tried three other IDE cables just to make sure that wasn't the problem. No luck. To rule out a failing power supply or a bad power connector, I tried several since the machine had lots of unused ones. No matter what I tried, I could not get the CD drive to read, or even recognize, the CD. It might spin up, but then it would always end up presenting me with the "Abort, Retry, or Fail" message. I tried another CD, too. The common denominator among all of these is the IDE controller itself, but I have no way of checking that. So, can you think of anything that I could try to help rectify this problem? Can the CD drive and the HDD share the same IDE cable? Thanks. - DC
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb
I would have unplugged the CD, imaged the drive to drive, rebooted with the new drive in the old drive's slot and the CD hooked back up. Although a clean install is always "best" in the long run, it is so hard to justify via time it takes.... :sigh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I would have unplugged the CD, imaged the drive to drive, rebooted with the new drive in the old drive's slot and the CD hooked back up. Although a clean install is always "best" in the long run, it is so hard to justify via time it takes.... :sigh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
...imaged the drive to drive...
Kinda hard to do when the old drive does not work.
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
...rebooted with the new drive...
Drive must be formatted with an OS before it can be booted from. This can't be done without the CD drive.
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
...CD hooked back up.
Does the CD suddenly work now?
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
Although a clean install is always "best" in the long run, it is so hard to justify via time it takes....
With the exception of once, I've never installed one Windows OS atop another. Too much residual stuff left behind that causes problems later. I'd rather spend an extra 45 minutes up front rather than several hours later on.
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb
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Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
...imaged the drive to drive...
Kinda hard to do when the old drive does not work.
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
...rebooted with the new drive...
Drive must be formatted with an OS before it can be booted from. This can't be done without the CD drive.
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
...CD hooked back up.
Does the CD suddenly work now?
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
Although a clean install is always "best" in the long run, it is so hard to justify via time it takes....
With the exception of once, I've never installed one Windows OS atop another. Too much residual stuff left behind that causes problems later. I'd rather spend an extra 45 minutes up front rather than several hours later on.
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb
DavidCrow wrote:
Kinda hard to do when the old drive does not work
then why bother hooking it up at all? If the drive is working, then it can be imaged.
DavidCrow wrote:
Does the CD suddenly work now?
well, if you replace the disks without trying to share IDE hosting, yeah it does. other than that you are back to checking master/slave issues with IDE, or you can drop the old drive into an IDE case on the USB and copy anything that remains after you have your OS installed. Perhaps I misunderstood the problem, but the way it was stated, you made it sound like the main issue was sharing IDE and the drive was failing, but not completely dead. If completely dead, remove it, move the new drive into it's IDE slot and don't bother trying to share IDE channels. The other possibility is that it is the IDE controller, not the drive or CD which is why you can't seem to read either.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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DavidCrow wrote:
Kinda hard to do when the old drive does not work
then why bother hooking it up at all? If the drive is working, then it can be imaged.
DavidCrow wrote:
Does the CD suddenly work now?
well, if you replace the disks without trying to share IDE hosting, yeah it does. other than that you are back to checking master/slave issues with IDE, or you can drop the old drive into an IDE case on the USB and copy anything that remains after you have your OS installed. Perhaps I misunderstood the problem, but the way it was stated, you made it sound like the main issue was sharing IDE and the drive was failing, but not completely dead. If completely dead, remove it, move the new drive into it's IDE slot and don't bother trying to share IDE channels. The other possibility is that it is the IDE controller, not the drive or CD which is why you can't seem to read either.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
then why bother hooking it up at all? If the drive is working, then it can be imaged.
Windows somehow got corrupt. Hooking it up as a slave, Windows XP will attempt to repair the bad spots on the drive. I can then copy data files from the old drive to the new drive. I can then reformat it and use it as secondary storage (going on the assumption that the old HDD does not have any physical problems). At one point in time, the old HDD was removed from the picture. At that point, I simply wanted to boot from the CD so that I could format the new HDD. That's when I put the HDD issues aside and started down the "CD drive is messed up" road.
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb
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A friend asked me to try and fix her Windows computer. I found that the HDD was going/gone bad so a replacement was in order. I got the new drive in place as the master and moved the old drive in as slave. Now it was just a matter of booting up from a Windows XP disc, formatting the new drive, and installing the OS. This is the proverbial "cake walk" as I've done it dozens of times. Instead, I spent the next several hours trying to figure out why the CD drive would not work. With a disc in, it will spin up and down intermittingly. I thought it was the drive so I tried a working CD drive from one of my other computers. Same thing. I also tried three other IDE cables just to make sure that wasn't the problem. No luck. To rule out a failing power supply or a bad power connector, I tried several since the machine had lots of unused ones. No matter what I tried, I could not get the CD drive to read, or even recognize, the CD. It might spin up, but then it would always end up presenting me with the "Abort, Retry, or Fail" message. I tried another CD, too. The common denominator among all of these is the IDE controller itself, but I have no way of checking that. So, can you think of anything that I could try to help rectify this problem? Can the CD drive and the HDD share the same IDE cable? Thanks. - DC
"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15
"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb