Please help, my comp wont boot

[frozentundra123456]

Recently my 2 year old Acer Aspire desktop began taking a long time to boot up. Yesterday, it locked up while using it and I had to turn off the power to restart. Upon restart, I got a message that there were corrupted files and the hard drive needed to do a disk check. The computer booted up finally, but eventually locked up again. Now when I try to boot up it does disk check or start up repair and will not boot into windows. The comp starts to boot, you can hear the hard drive spinning. Then there is a kind of whine sound and the disk activity light goes out. Eventually, the disk will spin again, but now I either crash back into disk check or startup repair every time.

The computer specs are E4500, 3gb ram, Vista, low power 9800GT, 300 watt power supply. Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be and any suggestions to solve it?? I did not get a windows CD with the machine, but I made a recovery disk before using the machine and also have an Acronis boot disk and full backup made a couple of months ago. Is this likely to be a hardware problem (power supply, ram, video card,cpu) or just a software problem??

Thanks a lot in advance for any advice. I really dont want to take this machine in for repair, but it is looking like at best I may have to re-install windows.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd guess your hd is failing. Download a live Linux CD(Ubuntu would be a good choice), and boot to that. If you can work inside that environment without crashing, it's most likely your hd.

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

It could be lots of things, you're going to get responses claiming it's the power supply, memory, motherboard, or HD. Tuff to trouble shoot if you don't have spare parts lying around. I keep an extra power supply on my shelf just for this reason. Also have extra memory, another hard drive, and graphics card. I start with the power supply and see if that fixes it.

That's why it's nice to have 2 or 3 computers around so you can test stuff. I also end up keeping all my old parts instead of selling them on Ebay.

 

[JTsyo]

I'm with lxskllr, from what you describe I would say test the HDD first.

 

[Slugbait]

When was the last time you cleaned this two-year-old computer?

 

[frozentundra123456]

When was the last time you cleaned this two-year-old computer?

Thanks for the responses so far from everyone.

I do clean the machine periodically and just cleaned it again. Dust buildup was my first thought too but no such luck. Seems to be a much more serious problem.

 

[Raizinman]

Any chance of Malware or a virus? Do you use the torrents?

 

[theevilsharpie]

Then there is a kind of whine sound and the disk activity light goes out. Eventually, the disk will spin again, but now I either crash back into disk check or startup repair every time.

Disk failure

/thread

 

[frozentundra123456]

Thanks to all who replied. The problem was in fact a bad hard drive. I replaced the hard drive and did a system restore and the comp is working again.

Thanks especially to lxskllr for suggesting the linux CD. I would not want to use it as my primary operating system, but it was useful while windows was not working. It even recognized my wireless adapter without a driver, which windows did not do when I got it working again. I had to go into linux to download the driver and then install it in windows. Way to go microsoft!!

This is the second hard drive failure I have had that seemed premature. Both the hard drive in this acer and one in an HP failed after about 2 years. Is this normal??

I thought the hard drive should last for at least four or five years. Does gaming lead to early failure? The only 2 hard drives I have had to replace were in my machines used for gaming. I have on old comp at home and 2 or 3 at work that are around 5 years old and never have had the hard drive fail in any of them.

 

[brandonwh64]

Check the manufacturer of your HDD and see if its still under warranty. if so RMA it and get another.

 

[lxskllr]

Your hd lifespan seems a little short, but I'd chalk it up to bad luck. Some come dead from the factory, and others never die. A sample size of 2 is hard to judge. Here's some guidelines I use that /may/ help prolong hd life. Keep in mind this is only my speculation, and isn't backed up by a single shred of evidence ;^)...

General theory- Starting from a dead stop is harder on the drive than leaving it spinning.

When I turn my machine on, I leave it on for the day. In warm weather I put it to sleep, in the winter it's on 24/7.

For power savings in the Windows power plan, I have it set to never shut down the drives.

Does it make a difference? Damned if I know, but I think my reasoning is sound.

 

[vshah]

Your hd lifespan seems a little short, but I'd chalk it up to bad luck. Some come dead from the factory, and others never die. A sample size of 2 is hard to judge. Here's some guidelines I use that /may/ help prolong hd life. Keep in mind this is only my speculation, and isn't backed up by a single shred of evidence ;^)...

General theory- Starting from a dead stop is harder on the drive than leaving it spinning.

When I turn my machine on, I leave it on for the day. In warm weather I put it to sleep, in the winter it's on 24/7.

For power savings in the Windows power plan, I have it set to never shut down the drives.

Does it make a difference? Damned if I know, but I think my reasoning is sound.

i generally do the same thing, and i've only had 1 HDD die in the last 10 years.

of course, that was the one that i didn't have a backup for

props to OP for having a backup!

 

[tweakboy]

You can check your hard drives health with

HD Tune application.

Take a look if one of them says Fail, then I suggest you backup and get a new hd my friend. gl

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

2nd the props for having a backup. Good job.