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Hi all.

Quite recently I installed Vista. It did not appear to work well, started to become... unstable. Like starting to hang just like that. And when I boot, it say something about a disk error and that I need to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to restart. So I tried to install Ubuntu 9.04. However, something went... wrong. It did not find Vista at all, said the HD had no OS on it, and then when I tried to install it, it just stopped on 5 %, and never moved passed that point.

Have my HD failed or something? Any help would be nice.

Take care,
Mr Z.

Well, all I can do is guess, but I think it has failed. Try replacing it. And when you say "my HD", is that plural? If so, install ubuntu on the one that is working.

Thecomet

Sounds like normal. This doesn't happen if you have quad core and 4GB of ram though.

If you wanted to install Ubuntu on dual boot. It has to to lots of things to the hard drive like create a new partition and put its name somewhere for the BIOS to read (for booting). Perhaps something went wrong in that area. I doubt that your hard drive has acctually failed.

My HD isn't plural. My HDs' is plural. But yea, I know you didn't mean it literally.

Anyway, My brother had the same problem on his computer (the one I am using at the moment, seeing as how mine died).

We tried to install linux as well after windows wouldn't.
We got the same results you do now.

After a while, when I was out, my brother some how managed to install XP again on that broken disk. I have no idea how he managed to do it.

The only side effect he has, is that the Windows XP cd has to be inserted in the cd-drive in order to be able to start the OS.
It sounds odd, but somehow it is true. I have no idea how come, except that maybe it didn't install properly and need to read files from the cd. But then you wouldn't get the "no boot device found" message.

However, as his BIOS is password protected, and neither me nor him knows the password, it could mean that the HD is not selected as a boot device and by bypassing the cd boot, it automatically jumps to the conclusion that it should use the harddisk to boot from, because it never actually did boot from the cd (otherwise the windows installer would run).

I do not know, however, if your question regarding whether the disk is broken or not, is a true question. Seeing as how we (my brother) was able to somehow install windows on his broken disk.

Broken, in the sense of what you described in your previous post.

Anyway.
You should try connecting the harddisk in a different computer (and make sure it's set as slave, if running IDE (on SATA this is not necessary) and see if it pops up in "my computer". Also if it does, if you can read files or if they are corrupt; which would indicate the disk is truly done for.

But anyway, BuhBYE!

This pretty much exactly what my HDD did when it failed. It'd run for ~five minutes and then suddenly lock up with the HDD indicator stuck on although sometimes on rare occasions the system would keep running but programs wouldn't launch, all those running would crash and the system wouldn't shut down. Linux would freeze on boot.

I may have to ask, is it HD or HDD (it is one of them I mean).

And I might have to note two things. One, I have had Vista on it before and never had this issue that I can remember. Not like this. Two, I have had Ubuntu on it before and have never had this issue with the install.

Also, there exist an option that I have not mentioned. I had a similar problem before, but after taking it to a computer guy it showed up to be the thing that connected the HDD to the rest of the computer was not connected properly. It had sort of "slided out". Not sure if that is what has happened now, though.



Anyway, if it is something that has gone wrong with the area and not the HDD itself, what should I do? Would a reformat help?



Not that technical, have a very limited experience with working with computer hardware... so I am not that sure of myself when it comes to this. Would booting into a Live-CD and test the HDD from there work just as well?



Good to know.

Yes, it will be possible to do that checkup through a Live-CD.


Do you remember if this cable was thin or wide? If it was wide, it was an IDE cable; while if it was thin it was a SATA cable.
Unless, of course, it was the cable which gave the harddisk power.

Also,
I don't think it matters what abbreviation you use for harddisk.
HDD = Hard Disk Drive, while HD is just Hard Disk (Or High Definition, lol).

Ok, good, will try.



I know I got problems with XP. It will install but cannot boot because it does not find the HDD. That should mean it is SATA?

(I never looked that close when the guy did it.)



Thanks for clearing it out .

EDIT:

Just tried the Live-CD, it did not find the HDD at all... so I guess it can only be one of two things now. Either the cable connecting it has detatched, or it is a HDD failure. The most propoble is the second option I think.

So, now the question is what to do. Contact the company I bought the computer of is the best option, but a part of me is tempted to buy a huge new HDD and replace the old one myself, lol.