Re: PC won't boot, can't access hard disk

"dg" <drgreen2k@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:f9c137c8-7ff3-4aa2-b831-2dec6fb3387c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Win XP SP3, SATA (Maxtor) hard disk - with 3 partitions

My PC crashed (first time for a couple of years!), and will not boot.
It did make a noise like it was accessing the floppy drive at the
time, although no disk was in this drive

On booting, it gets as far as the Windows splash screen, but then gets
the BSOD and mainly an "irql not less or equal" error, or occasionally
something like "trying to write to read only memory" error. And one or
two times, it stated a problem loading a driver from Symantec (I have
NIS 2009 installed)

I've tested memory and various other components and they are OK. One
disk check software found the HD and reported it OK, but the
manufacturers DOS diagnostic disk did not find the HD, so could not
check it

The PC won't start in any of the other start up options (Safe mode
etc) and the recovery console wont load as, when I boot from the
Windows CD, I need to load the SATA HD drivers from a floppy (Promise
378) but after the drivers are loaded and the load sequence ends, I
get the BSOD.

I took the HD out and connected it to a laptop via an external USB
adapter. The intention was to check the disk.

However, it spins up, but as soon as it is accessed by the laptop,
then it causes a BSOD on the laptop - again with the "irql not less or
equal" error.

So, it seems like a HD problem, but is there a cure?

Thanks

dg


Download Memtest86 and run it for several hours.
You could easily be seeing a RAM problem.



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