Computer shutdown?

[MGG=REVIEWS]

My computer has gone down, and we dont know the problem..it sais No hardrive found.

Now while playing World of warcraft (which we found wasn't the problem the computer crashed and wouldnt move! now that meaning i had to do a forced shutdown and the computer did some test when it restarted and then said it couldn't find the hardrive now this being a laptop i couldn't find the problem

My computer is being run on vista
can anyone help!

 

[luckshot]

could be that the hard drive is damaged, or even the connection from the hard drive to everything else

 

[AlphaWolf13]

See if there is a Hard Drive test you can run in your bios...
If there is one, run it, and if it fails, then you're hard drive is probably dead.

This is assuming that the connection isn't at fault.


On another note, how long have you had it?

 

[clarinetJWD]

I've run into this before, especially when using a SATA based drive. Boot up into BIOS (Usually by hitting Del, Esc, or F2 when you first turn on the computer), and check to see if it's listed on the hardare page there. if it is, there should be a boot device option somehwere, and you'll need to point it to the hard drive.

If it's not listed, your problems are a bit deeper. The first thing to try if you have access to another computer is a bootable firmware upgrade disk which will flash your BIOS. Might work. Otherwise, try removing the hard drive, boot, shut down, put it back in, and try again.

If all this fails, you're probably the next victim in a long line of hard drive failures.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

it could possibly be a dead battery on the motherboard, tho i don't think laptops have bios batteries

 

[Danny Ocean]

If the BIOS battery died then surely nothing would work, right?

Sounds like a melted drive. How hot can these get before they start breaking?

 

[Nu-Hir]

All BIOSes should have battereies. If they didn't, how would they save the settings when all power was removed from the system? It's quite possible the hard drive just died. Inside the BIOS, there may be an option to turn on SMART monitoring. That does a some test to see if a hard drive is any good. When turned on, it normally will give you a warning if a drive is going to go bad (I have it turned off because one of my drives I know is going bad but am too lazy to replace it).

When you turn on your laptop, do you hear a strange clicking noise? If you do, your hard drive is completely toast.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

If the BIOS battery died then surely nothing would work, right?

nope and that's the exact behavior that a dead bios battery does, it's an odd error and something you've had to have seen to know the signs

i've seen it a couple times and funnily enough most ppl don't believe you when you suggest that cause it doesn't seem to be the issue

 

[AlphaWolf13]

All BIOSes should have battereies. If they didn't, how would they save the settings when all power was removed from the system? It's quite possible the hard drive just died. Inside the BIOS, there may be an option to turn on SMART monitoring. That does a some test to see if a hard drive is any good. When turned on, it normally will give you a warning if a drive is going to go bad (I have it turned off because one of my drives I know is going bad but am too lazy to replace it).

When you turn on your laptop, do you hear a strange clicking noise? If you do, your hard drive is completely toast.

Haha, yep, any sort of clicking noise or whine is a good sign of Hard Drive DEATH...
I have an internship at a computer repair shop and this is, by far, my favorite sound