Posts Tagged ‘failure’
PC ER: Operating system not found.
This is one of the worst kind of error messages you can receive. Typically, however, one can conclude that either the hard drive is not functioning properly, the BIOS cannot detect the hard drive — or — if you’re really lucky, it’s a simple, dumb mistake like leaving a USB flash drive in the computer and the BIOS is attempting to boot from it or the wrong HDD has the priority for boot. That can easily cause the operating system not found error message.
The system that we’re talking about here is an old Dell Dimension from the Windows98 era. This particular computer had been used by various people over the years as a gaming,, Internet and mostly email station. It had never been opened before, so it surely had tons of dust from the 90’s in there.
Because the system has functioned without any hardware failures over the past decade, I immediately assumed the hard drive had finally come to it’s natural end and crashed once and for all.
How-To Transfer Data From Old Laptops
To be clear, this is really just a brief overview of how to take out a typical laptop HDD (hard disk drive) and then plug it into a desktop system in order to retrieve the contents. This happens frequently. Old laptops give out in one way or another, sometimes it’s the display, the PSU (power supply unit) or the motherboard. Whatever it is, after a certain number of years it typically costs less than the cost of a new computer altogether. Unfortunate and wasteful, yes, but that’s the reality.
When the laptop “dies” or doesn’t boot up, if you’re lucky, the HDD has suffered no mechanical failure and is just fine, even if somehow Windows won’t load (like an NTLDR missing error, for example). Chances are, your data will be just fine and the fastest possible way to get the data off is to simply take the drive out and deal with it at the source.
PC ER: Loud Pop Followed By System Failure
Symptoms:
PC emits very loud “pop” noise four times over a span of 5 months yet everything is working fine. Suddenly, without warning, the computer shuts off completely. Upon reboot, the system barely passes POST (Power On Self Test, or BIOS (Basic Input Output System)) without shutting off again. I receive a frantic phone call. “What’s wrong? Why doesn’t the computer turn on anymore? I didn’t do anything!”
System Background:
This is a system that I built for a law firm, no fancy components were necessary except for the RAID 1 for backup in the event of a hard drive failure.Most of the components were new and in excellent condition.