booting problem

[Charles]

Hardware:

Compaq Presario V4000(V4435NR) with XP Home Edition

Problem:

Laptop will boot to Compaq screen with boot order and setup options only and will hang there.

Troubleshooting:

Looked into setup and change boot order to boot to CDROM. Attemped to boot to Ultimate Boot CD to check hard drive but it won't boot. Tried a different Windows XP CD than the one that came with Laptop, since the owner does not have the original, but will not boot to it either. When I tried running a little piece of diagnostics in Bios that checks hard drive it says "no ide". Also tried resetting memory with no luck.

I'm thinking if the hard drive was bad at least the machine would boot into the cd but it doesn't. I'm suspecting a bad motherboard. Is there anything else I can do or check? Another thing I noticed is that it takes 3 1/2 minutes for the setup screen to show from the time I hit F10. Could this be a virus?

Thanks.

[liambl]

Viruses only affect Windows, you have a hardware problem. I seems like a HDD problem, they usually make the setup take ages to pop up while the PC is trying to work it out. On most notebooks you have to press a special key to make it boot from CD, even though it is set to boot from CD. Look in the manual, it is usually F11 or around there. You may want to check the IDE cable to the HDD and reseat it. If all else fails, you probably need a new drive.

[Charles]

Hard drive went south. A new hard drive is being formatted.

I connected the bad drive to a Coolmax drive reader but does not show anything. Any way I could try recovering data from this drive without having to spend $400?

[Brothersoft]

No, you should not reformat the bad hdd!! I have experienced that case, because of the hdd partition table loss, the computer only can't boot Windows correctly, you can use Diskgen to fix the partition table. After that, all of your data will be intact.

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by Charles I connected the bad drive to a Coolmax drive reader but does not show anything. Any way I could try recovering data from this drive without having to spend $400?

If the drive isn't recognized when you connect it to a USB enclosure, I'd think you'd pay more than $400 for data recovery. You may be out of luck. You could try using a 3.5" to 2.5" adaptor inside a desktop, but that probably won't work either.