BSOD on every startup

I'm not 100% sure I have a hardware problem, but I think I do. My computer was making a grinding sound about once every 20 secs like it was trying to process something (except it was pretty loud). So, I tried restarting my computer, and it made a loud clunking sound when it turned off, like I have never heard before. When it came back up, I got a blue screen. I tried all the different modes (safe modes, ect..), but I get the blue screen every time. Windows will not start at all. I ran chkdsk /p in recovery console mode and it said there are one or more errors. Then I ran chkdsk /r (it didn't say it corrected anything). I ran chkdsk /p again and it didn't say anything about errors. I tried rebooting, and still windows will not start up at all.

The Blue Screen message reads: Stop: 0x0000007B ( 0xF7C7F524,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

I don't know what to do from here. Is the hard drive done? What should I do?

I appreciate any help.

 

From here.

If you have any live CDs, try to boot from them, and access your hard drive that way. That way you might be abe to save some of the data on it. The clunking sound, combined with the error message and the inability to boot, seems to me to point to a hard drive error. Does the drive show up as a valid drive to install an OS to?

 

If I boot from a live CD, how do I save data? A flash drive?( sorry, I've never done anything like that before).

I'm not sure what that means, could you put it in more layman's terms?

Sorry for my ignorance....

Thanks for the reply

 

if you grab your XP disc and put it in the drive, and then boot your computer, it should ask you if you want to install the operating system. If you say yes, it will ask you which drive to install it to. If it can't find your drive, or if it can find it but fails to install to it, you most likely have a dead or dying hard drive.

When was the last time you backed up your stuff?

 

My Dell didn't come with any kind of XP disc, but I can request one for free(one per customer).

About six months ago, I put a bunch of pictures and valuable info on a flash drive, so there isn't a whole lot I'm worried about losing. The main loss would be Microsoft Office.

And, about the live CD's... Are the special boot disk that will only run XP, and the disk that installs XP two differnet things? Or are they the same?

Thanks

 

Hey there,

Does this model have a hidden repair / restore partition ?

:wave

 

It sounds like the HD is gone. So the basic answer is you must now replace the HD and load XP onto the new drive. Replacing the HD should not be difficult even for a beginner. You will need the Recovery CD from DELL. Because of all the load mechanical sounds I don't think you have any option other than starting from a fresh install on a new HD.

I can't see how you can save Office from that HD even with a Live CD since Office is an installed program. Do you have an Office CD? Did you buy Office from Dell? If you get and use the recovery CD from DELL you will probably need to install Office separately.

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A live CD is usually a Linux based CD that can load the linux operating system into memory without needing the HD. So even though your PC won't boot from the HD you will see an operating system and can try to access your HD. (your HD may be viable enough to recover data from, but too corrupted to load XP)

Linux Mint is a very user friendly live CD. You download the ISO file about 700mb and burn it to a CD as an "image" using something like imgburn. This makes a bootable CD. If you boot from the CD you will get a Windows like desktop that will let you try to access your HD and if you have a flash drive you can plug it in and copy files from the HD to the flash.
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What he said. LOL (Thanks for picking that up Sach! Live has been far too hectic for me to check in here today.)

I've been able to salvage data from hard drives too corrupt to boot like that in the past, and Mint is one of the easier ones to use. Depending on your hardware you might even be able to go online with it, but the main you'd want to do is of course save any data you haven't backed up yet.

Oh, and here's ImgBurn.