My computer is on the fritz and I think its my harddrive's fault

[mrfredman]

So I recently upgraded my PCs 3d card and that is where my troubles began. For the first few days everything worked like a charm and I had no issues with my computer. Then, all of a sudden my computer decided not to turn on, but not for lack of trying. What would happen is the green light in front would turn on and it would make sounds like it was trying to start up and then about two seconds later it would just turn itself off again, and it would keep trying to turn itself on (and fail) until I pulled the plug on the machine. I found a very odd solution to this problem, it wasn't consistent, and it doesn't make sense to me, but when it was doing this, if i would turn my computer on its side or prop it up at an angle it would work just fine, but when I returned it to its normal position it would refuse to start up again. Oh and once it got booted up it didn't have any issues.

I just went on vacation for a week and now that I'm back, my problems have gotten worse. I have no problems turning the computer on now, but when it turns on it spends way too long (a minute or two) at the first bios loading screen (i think thats what it is, just the first screen when the computer starts up), and then I get this error message.

"Drive 0 not found: Serial ATA, SATA-0
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility"

That means it can't see my harddrive right?

When I hit F1, it says "No boot device available" and I'm given my options again.

When I hit F2 I get into the setup menu and I'm able to look around. When I go to Boot Sequence, for both onboard SAtA Hard Drive and Onboard IDE Hard Drive it says (not present).

So I've found the source of my problem, but I have no Idea what to do about it. HELP!

Oh, and one more clue, when my computer first tries to start up now it makes this clicking sound every two seconds or so, and when I opened up the box it was definitely coming from the HD.

Is it dead? Is this fixable. Again, Help!

 

[Fred]

I would say your hdd is definitely defective, however it is possible you have other issues as well. What you're going to have to do is replace the hdd (hdds are not repairable) and reinstall Windows. If you are having no more problems, great! If not, post back here and we will help you out through narrowing down any other issues.

 

[jaggy]

When I was building a friend's computer almost the same thing happened. (with the turning on it's side and everything) The cause was that one of the case USB connection terminals was touching the metal case causing something to short. I would wiggle the damn thing and I could see the motherboard LEDs turn on and off. On, when everything was fine, and off when the short was made. I don't know for sure but I keep thinking that the mobo had some power protection thing on it, and thank god it worked.

I don't know what exactly this could be in your case but the HDD is also a very strong argument since I've also had an issue with a harddrive not working in one position and working in the opposite. The 250GB Seagate I have now was mounted vertically in my old case and one day it started making horrible noises, could not boot at all. As soon as I turned it horizontally it worked fine.

Hard Drives are weird... sorry, but the above is all I know and all I can say about your issue.