Hard drive failing?

I need some help figuring out whether I have a dying hard drive, and I know there are many more knowledgeable folks in this forum who might help me sort things out.

I recently picked up a desktop PC offered on FreeCycle by a woman who is a cat veterinarian. She called it a “broken” PC and said “Needs operating system installed; might work just fine thereafter-started acting up and gave up on it and got a new one. Dell Optiplex 201L; Pentium 4”

I asked, “Do you think you had malware? I can clean it and put an OS on it. I like fixing up old computers.”

And she replied, “Malware possible; not sure; don't even remember what it was doing or not doing-has been in closet for months taking up space. No monitor, mouse, etc but I suspect you have all of that (choosing you b/c of your answer). Enjoy!

When I got it home, I discovered the PC has only USB ports, so I had to hunt up a USB keyboard and mouse. At first I just plugged it in and turned it on without anything attached and I was happy to see it boot to Windows XP Pro, but a little surprised because there was a Windows XP Home product key sticker on it. It had a Windows login screen for user “staff” that needed a password. I went into Safe Mode and found the same login screen. On rebooting a couple times a message came up “no disk” as if it couldn’t find the hard drive.

Then I read some MG threads and learned I could just change the user name to “administrator” and no password and get in. When I got in, up came a message that the system had recovered from a serious error.

I looked at Control Panel Device Manager and found yellow question mark on PCI. Not sure what that refers to.

Looked at Event Viewer and there were numerous entries for disk.

I went into setup, looked at everything and saw SMART reporting off so I turned it on.

I ran SUPERAntiSpyware—nothing significant. Then MalwareBytes, but it seemed awfully slow to run and just quit in the middle of the scan. I opened Task Manager and it showed no applications running. Then it said it was not responding. Then I got a savedump.exe application error: “Instruction at 0x59ac89id referenced memory at 0x59ac89id. The referred data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of 0xc0009c.” I clicked OK and got a message “Drive 0: Serial ATA, SATA-0
Notice-Hard Drive Monitoring System has reported that a parameter has exceeded its normal operating range. Dell recommends that you backup your data regularly. Parameter out of range may or may not indicate a potential hard drive problem.”

I hit F1 to continue and this time it went to the Win XP screen and just sat there for minutes, then gave me the Windows Login screen –administrator –no password. When I hit enter the background screen of clouds and green fields came up but no desktop icons.

In all the years I’ve used computers, I’ve never had a failing hard drive, but I’m guessing this is what this PC has. Can someone tell me if this is typical? Any hope I can copy what’s on the existing drive to another hard drive?

 

Just out of curiosity, how hot does the PC get? Have you checked to see how dusty it is? because with her being a Vet and it being put away in a cupboard, it could just be really dusty and overheating really quick.

 

I haven’t opened the case yet but I hope to get to it tomorrow.

Not much luck doing anything today. When I turned the PC on, the “parameter” message was there. F1 to Win XP screen where it stayed a long time. Then CHDSK came up and ran--Stage 1 file verification completed quickly. Stage 2 verifying indexes gave messages about correcting errors in $I30 for files 71, 3365 and 5012. Said it was 10% complete and then went back to the Dell screen. F1 to Win XP screen, and CHDSK came up a second time. Said it was correcting errors in 5012, 9409, 10891 and 17194. It got to 29% complete and then went back to the Dell screen. I heard two beeps, hit F1, went to Win XP screen and stayed for a long time. Screen came up with choices of Start Windows Normally, Last Good Configuration and Safe Mode. I picked Safe Mode and got a black screen with Start button and bar at bottom but no icons. Turned off via power button.

Went through Dell screen, two beeps, F1, and then “No boot disk available.” Same message after several F1s. Had to turn off again.

Tried hitting F8 at the Dell screen, got Drive 0 not found. Went around again and chose Safe Mode when I had the choice again. Just sat for a long time and had to turn off. Went a couple more rounds of Dell screen, two beeps. F1 and then got “error auto-sensing secondary hard drive.” Then Dell screen, beeps, F1 and chose Last Good Configuration, but just looped back to the Dell screen. Next F1 got the no boot device message.

I never got to the clouds and fields desktop.

This Dell Optiplex 210L has Phoenix ROM BIOS Plus Version 1.10 A01. Could those beeps be error codes?

Any recommendations for what I should try next?

 

The beeps are normal. On a Dell 1 beep is everything is normal and then continues on to look for the boot device (usually CDROM and if no CD in tray then HD).

Two beeps means the BIOS sees a change from the last time the machine was started (in this case "no boot device available" or "no HD found"). Then it prompts you to acknowledge the change and try to boot (F1) or manually look around Setup/BIOS and accept the change (F2).

If you can get to safe mode options again try Safe Mode with Command Prompt and see if you can type the command
chkdsk c: /f
ie. chkdsk (space) c: (space) /f and whether it will run.

Which OS installation CD do have? You might be able to run chkdsk from recovery console from the CD to check the drive which would be more stable then trying to run it from the HD.

The other thing you can do is run a HD diagnostic to see if it can correct any errors or if it tells you the drive is bad. You need to know if the drive is Seagate/Maxtor or Western Digital. Dell usually uses Seagate/Maxtor drives. Because Windows is unstable you would want to get the DOS/CD version to the program and burn it to a blank CD and run it from there.

 

Change the hd cable. it seems the computer sometimes sees the hd and other times it doesn't which might mean a cable problem.
It sounds like there might be more wrong but you have to get the hd seen at every boot up before you spend time trying to fix the hd.

 

Sunday I took the PC outside to clean it. No kitty fur, but gobs of dust bunnies. I cleaned it with compressed air and wiped down everything I could safely. Installed an extra gig of RAM while I was there, so now it is maxed out in memory. I just unplugged and replugged the SATA cable until I could hunt up a different one.

I switched keyboard and mouse to the USB ports by the Ethernet jack since I found some Google results that location seemed to make a difference on some Dells.

When I got back to Win XP screen, after a long wait, I got to choose Safe Mode with Prompt, but it would never go into Safe Mode, so I turned it off. Next round I tried Start Normally and CHKDSK came up, found errors 37727 and 38110, then completed Stage 2 quickly, recovered a long list of orphaned files. Said one bad cluster. Then PC looped back through its steps and gave me the password screen and let me in to the desktop!

Said it found new hardware and Hardware Wizard came up wanting to search. Device installer errors came up about the mouse and keyboard. Guess Dell likes to see Genuine Dell instead of Logitech and Gateway. Both seemed to work OK. But then I got another savedump.exe error. No icons on desktop so I tied David GP’s suggestion and a screen opened with Desktop as the top folder. Clicking it opened a window with My documents, My computer, Internet Explorer, My Network Places and Recycle Bin, but in the window and not on the actual desktop.

So I turned off and went around again. CHKDSK ran again and gave me a huge list of file recovered segment is unreadable. It finally stopped and then restarted itself and recovered orphaned files. It actually then gave me the password screen and let me in to the desktop where the icons were now back where they should be. Hardware Wizard came up again, but I was not connected to the internet.

Today I put a new SATA cable in and connected Ethernet cord.

CHKDSK ran again with orphaned files and a bad cluster.

I picked F12 at the Dell screen this time and found a diagnostic menu. I first tried to boot to utility partition but got a message that there is none. I then tried HD Diagnostics. I got the drive is Samsung HDJJ/P-Fail-Return Code 4.

I’ve found that that code refers to an electrical failure (I’m assuming within the HD itself?)

When I went through again I amazingly got to the desktop and looked into Device Mgr and found yellow marks on MS Update Device, and USB Controller in addition to the PCI. Also looked at Event Viewer System and saw disk problems first reported 032411 and no record between 062411 and 01912. Connected to the internet, it started downloading Windows Updates and a Java update. I updated MSE which had been there already and it updated to the present.

When I tried to restart later ,I got ntoskrnl is missing or corrupt and the computer just loops from Dell screen to pick F1 or F2 and the Windows logo screen and then back again.

So I guess I have finally killed the hard drive. Thanks for all the suggestions given above. Any new suggestions now other than give up and replace the hard drive?