Bad Hard drive?

Hello all, Happy New Year!!
I have a Dell Dimension 8200, ( Church Computer) and the graphics Card went bad, I changed it. Tested it and it worked, Pastor came to picked it up.
The issue:
1- At church he tried to start using the computert and is getting black screen:
Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility
I have look around and it seems all cables connected.
2- I tried a different Hard Drive and not problems
3- Some people said to do Chkdisk but if I cannot pass the Black screen how can I do that?
4- I have done the Alt+e and Alf+f to reset BIOS and starts reading but stops saying something like Hrd drive 0 not found or something like that.
Any ideas?
5- If the HDD got damage, how can I recover the inf. in it?

Thank you all

 

Well will try #5
The easiest way to recover info would be to use a bootable cd like knoppix linux
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-info/index-en.html

get it here
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

This works as long as the drive is not completely fried (will not spin up) but sounds like your ok there.
You can boot the Knoppix cd by changing the boot order in BIOS to cd first then save and exit BIOS and pc will reboot.

You then should gbe able to read all the files on the HD and copy,move,etc from the desktop once it loads
Because it is a cd based distro it may seem to respond slowly this is normal as the cd/dvd drive does not have the same speed/efficiency as one installed on your HD

 

Well a suggestion would be to find a working computer, take the suspected bad hard drive, hook it up as a slave to the working pc and go from there to see if it will be found or not.

 

Thank you for your response, but first my knowledge on computers is very limited ( very limited
1 - How do I change the order in BIOS?
2 - Are you saying that once I install that disk I will or should be able to see all the programs and files in the screen, as if the hard drive was ok?

THANK YOU again!

 

1 -- You will need to press the F2 key (setup)you then should see the bios screen ( will look very basic) find the boot order and put the cd to boot first. Then save and exit (should be an option on the bios screen) make sure your cd is in the drive...

Knoppix will present you with a desktop that will allow you to see the windows files (NTFS) pics,data,etc things like installed programs that you do not have the disc for may be gone.
Then dl files to a usb stick-- change hd ,reinstall windows, and reload your info from the usb stick

 

or here are some pictures to help you....

http://www.cyberwalker.com/article/28

 

Knoppix

Thanks again for your help.
1 - I did burn the dvd and it is running however how do I locate the hard drive?
2 - I've heard that if I have a second HardDrive I can use the old one as a Slave how do I do that?

Thank you, Thank you!!! :confused

 

#1 What are the steps to using Knoppix to back up your Windows files when Windows won't boot?

The first step is to boot Knoppix. One of the best ways to recover the data is to plug in a USB drive of some sort.

* When the desktop loads, you will see at least two hard drive icons on the desktop (one for your hard drive and one for the USB drive).
* Click on the hard drive icons to open them up and figure out which drive is which.
* Right-click the USB drive icon and choose "Actions > Change read/write mode" so you can write to the drive (it's read-only by default for security reasons).
* Now find the files you want to back up and drag and drop them to the USB drive. When you are finished, shut down the system and remove the USB drive.


^a shameless cut and paste^

 

#2 A surprisingly well put together tutorial with lots of pics
http://www.dtidata.com/resourcecenter/2007/04/23/how-to-slave-hard-drive/

 

You have not idea how much I apreciate this, I do see my desktop, and this:
K ( I think equivalent to start in win)
pinguin
" Window list"
Desktop Access
Home
Konsole
Konkeror

But I do not see a harddisk:confused

 

Click on the K (you are correct same as start)
Look for system menu>storage media

anything there?

 

nope, no system menu nor storage media

 

Hmm ?
What do you see when you click on the K?

You should see a list like windows pop up

 

under the system's menu:
security
adsl
boinc
bulkrename...
but not storage media

 

i have a laptop, messanger???

 

Best to keep the advice in the forum so others can see what has already been suggested. Also some members may wish to follow the advice given, and will not be able to do so if you resort to Messenger.

Thanks

 

ok thats odd
Let us go to the heart of the matter by using Konsole ( sort of like the command line in windows

Click on this it will open a window that is text only

My example is
[jerry@localhost ~]$

type the following after the$
ls /media

what do you get?

 

bash: Is/media: No such file or directory

 

Type it exactly
ls /media
Noting space in between ls and /media

 

command not found

 

I think I will try having that HDD added as a slave HDD, and in XP try yo recover the dcs, what do you think?

 

Hold on have to go put the parrot to sleep be back in 5

Jerry

 

Yes the above tutorial link is a good one you can try that
Just thought we might try the other way first... no worries let us now how it goes

Petaluma

 

Thank you
I've heard that is a good operating system, thank you again