Strange boot problem

On my friend's computer, there is a weird problem where the computer won't even boot up. I used Acronis disc director 8 (boot disc, to see if the HDD was intact) and the program wouldn't even start up because of a error where it said something about it can't partition smart drive discs or something like that...i also ran a boot disc HDD, Video card, and RAM checker and all came up fine...i also opened up his computer and cleaned it out for good measure...still the problem persists. I'll post some more details, including the specs, after the next time i go over there. (the comptuer is a Sony Vaio)

 

While you are over there, check if it actually said it can't partition S.M.A.R.T. drive disks. S.M.A.R.T. is a feature of some HDDs and could help whoever gets onto this for you. If you find that it is a S.M.A.R.T. drive, it should say whether S.M.A.R.T. is enabled and you may be able to do what you were trying to do - from memory, S.M.A.R.T. is enabled and disabled in the BIOS.

S.M.A.R.T. can be used to test a hard drive for imminent failure and when enabled monitors the disk, giving warning of pending trouble.

 

i know what S.M.A.R.T. is and what it does...i have used this exact same program on the exact same CD on my computer and my SATA hard drive is S.M.A.R.T. enabled when i partitioned it and it worked just fine. the partition program error didnt say anything about S.M.A.R.T. being enabled or disabled or causing a problem