hard drive not responding

[ESL]

have amd 1gh 256 memory. my hard drive is not responding. do i change the HD or stall the windows98. thanks:(

[grasshopperbe]

could you give a little more specifications, otherwise its gonna be hard for someone to give good advice
what happened? did it just broke down,?
When you try to boot up, what happens.
what a system is it. (What OS, HD, motherboard, ...)
any extra information could be useful

[Cricket]

Hi ESL,

Are you getting any error messages? What does it say exactly? When does the message appear, right at bootup?

:) Cricket

[Dan]

Hi ESL
what happens when you turn on the computer??

[ESL]

when i first start the computer, something else shows up. some sort of boot thing. maybe it was asking for a boot disk, so i tried 2 use the boot disk but nothing happened. we sent it 2 a store and they said the hard drive wasn't responding

the ironic thing is...

that my other computer had the SAME problem, and they fixed it right away. i don't want to go back, so i am trying to figure out what is going on. any ideas???

[Dan]

hi ESL
I think what you are seeing is the post page (pre- os - test). Unless it is actually asking for the boot disc, you probably don't need to use it. If you get no response from the disc, chances are there actually is a hardware (harddrive) problem.
Is this a "new to you" computer? Did you ever have it running right, or did you do something that caused this change??
From what I can gather from what you've said so far I would guess that, yes, your harddrive has failed.
Tell us a little about the history of this problem...maybe something can be done to fix things.

[morriswindgate]

Make a BOOTDISK floppy and try to boot from the floppy drive. Try going into the BIOS setup and Changing the Boot to the CD-ROM and booting from it. Report back the results.

[ESL]

i tried but it doesnt work. thanks

[Dan]

I'd say your hard drive is defective....
what say you....MWG??