I have a problem that no amount of Googling or asking friends has helped.
When I try to boot my PC my fans come on as usual, but that's it, it doesn't boot. However I can boot from a live CD if my external HD isn't plugged in.
Then, when it is booted from the live CD, my internal HD is accessible as usual, and if I reboot I can boot from it as usual, but again, not if my external hard drive is plugged in.
Any ideas as to what the problem could be?
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Anonymous2007-12-08 18:21
Might be a power issue. Needs moar Jiggawatts.
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Anonymous2007-12-08 19:13
I thought the same at one point, but nothing has changed.
All I did was reboot, now I have this problem.
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Anonymous2007-12-08 20:59
Corrupted boot sector.
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Anonymous2007-12-08 22:01
The BIOS is probably putting the external HD above the internal HD (and possibly the CD drive) in the boot order when it's plugged in, and so it tries to boot from the external HD first, which of course fails. Go into the BIOS and just set the internal HD to boot first.
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Anonymous2007-12-09 19:06
>>4 >>5
Bullshit, read the fucking post. The guy can boot from the internal disc fine if he boots from CD and then reboots. That rules out both your theories.
>and if I reboot I can boot from it as usual
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Anonymous2007-12-09 19:15
Ok day 3 and I still have no idea what the problem is, no-one I've called can help.
The oddest thing is that the external HDD is completely unaccessible no matter what I do. I don't want to take it to a specialist and pay lots of money for them to tell me "It's broken", but I really can't see what the issue is.
Does anyone have any ideas for tmeporary solutions?
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Anonymous2007-12-10 2:43
I'm still thinking it might be a power issue. But you're probably dealing with a broken mainboard.
If you have more than one internal hard drive, unplug all but the boot drive and see if it helps. If you have a fairly modern graphics card, take it out of the system, use the on board graphics chip instead (if you have one) and see if it helps. So try to reduce the overall power consumption and see what happens.
Of course, if you have a more powerful PSU lying around, why not try that.
If all that doesn't help, it's likely another problem.
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Anonymous2007-12-10 13:51
>>10
I only have one intenal HD right now, I also only have a graphics chip, no card.
Also, how do I reduce power consumption?
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Anonymous2007-12-10 14:56
Hmm... not much else you can do, except unplugging all USB devices for example. But if you only use one HDD and no graphics card, the PSU would have to be extremely weak in order to cause problems. So I guess we can probably rule that out as well. Does the drive properly spin up when you first power on the computer?
Did this start suddenly or have you noticed any other strange behavior in the past?
Things you could try, in no particular order:
- Plug in a second hard drive, install your OS on there and see if you can boot from that one. Remember to configure the BIOS accordingly.
- BIOS update
Other than that I'm out of ideas for now.
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Anonymous2007-12-10 15:29
One problem after another...
I can't access the internet from a live CD now.
The PSU is a paltry 300W but I don't know what would make it suddenly stop working so yeah, lets rule that out. One thing I did notice before this is that it when I told it to reboot, it shut down. Not a major issue but may help?
Also, I'm about to try updating BIOS, but again, I don't see how that could be the problem as it came on so suddenly without me changing anything.
Thanks though.
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Anonymous2007-12-11 3:36
Don't rule out the PSU, seriously.
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Anonymous2007-12-11 7:59
Well it's starting to show virus-like qualities now.
I can't access the internet through any partition. My external HD won't show up anymore, and I can't finish disk check, it stops at phase 2 everytime. To make things worse; I can't schedule it for boot time either.
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Anonymous2007-12-11 10:53
Good news, my other partitions are accessing the internet!
I managed to get my external HD to work for a minute or two by fiddling with the device management.
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Anonymous2007-12-11 10:58
Brilliant news, I've got it to work by changing power supply. Thanks to everyone who said that. I plugged the HD into another socket and now I'm backing everything up as a matter of urgency.