[khanley]

The other day i was on my other computer a Dell desktop just browsing through facebook and such. i then walk away from the computer long enough for it to enter stand by. I come back a few hours later and try to "wake it up" simply by clicking the mouse or striking a key. None of that was working, but I could still hear the PC running. So I held the power button in for 8 seconds to let it restart. When it did that I recieved the following message 'Drive 1 not found: Serial ATA, SATA 2' It then said press F1 to continue or F12 for setup, within the setup screen it shows that all of the drivers are currently ON.

Recently it has been displaying the message 'Boot device not located'

Occasionaly if i strike F1 enough times it will proceed through to the desktop, but the OS is EXTREMELY sluggish. It will stay running until the computer is left idle for a given time and then it will continue to lock itself out of returning to the desktop, but I as I stated prior the computer will still be running. I feel as if it is the HDD, but and not completely sure. Can i please have some feeback.

Thanks,
Keith H

[BeeCeeBee]

Just a few basic questions.

Is the hard drive light on (flashing or steady?)

Do you hear any strange sounds such as clicking ?

Is the only reason you know the PC is running that you can hear the fans?

[Dalo Harkin]

It sounds like your HDD is failing - back up what you can ASAP.

You could also try replacing the MOBO CMOS battery as it may be running low and not saving the BIOS settings.
Also do you know how to enter the BIOS as you need to check that the first boot device is set to HDD and that the others are disabled.

Any problems then let us know.

[khanley]

appologies since it has been a while since my original posting. The only light that I see on is my light for my power supply. I get a bluye screen that tells me to uninstall any new devices which there aren't and to take them out using safe mode. I restarted and tried to enter safe mode and a long list covering the screen appear which stated "partition(2)/system32/driver/...." something like that, but the list literally remained there with a black screen listing multiple system32/drivers. i can tell that the conp is on because I can hear the fans and the screen has that glossy black glow to it unlike the dark flat black when it is off...if that makes sense

hope this helps with further assistance in diagnosis.

Im half tempted to start over regardless with a new HD just to eliminate the headaches this is causing.

thanks again

This post has been edited by khanley: 08 June 2009 - 09:11 PM

[Dalo Harkin]

You are probably better off doing as you suggested and format that drive and reinstall windows to it.
There are ways around various errors, but without actually knowing exactly what it is, it would take more time to diagnose than it would take to do a reinstall

Are you 100% sure that the drive is not split in two (partitioned) as some manufacturers now put all the drivers and software on a partition - this will become apparent when you try and reinstall the OS as it will list the partitions - if there are more than 1 partition then come back here and let us know