my computer freezes when it gets to "DETECTING I.D.E. DRIVES" during startup.how do i solve this problem

Question

my computer just hangs during startup when it gets to the "detecting ide drive" option and would not proceed after then.how do i solve this problem.

Answer 1

Your HDD is dead or perhaps almost dead. Install a new one and use the old one as slave drive. If you are lucky, you might still recover your files from it.

Answer 2

In my experience this implies one of your IDE disk drives has failed... deep in the electronics or in the disk mechanism.



So the drive electronics is seen by the computer but never finishes it's check-in due to failure of something internal in the drive.



If it's your only disk drive, you've probably lost everything. You'll need to buy a new disk drive and re-install all your software again and recover any of your files you've got backups for.



Alternatively, if you've got no backups and really need some data off the disk you'll have to pay a data recovery company to get the data back... but they are horribly expensive. Last time I got a quote they were charging lots of £ per megabyte recovered... that's lots of thousands per Gb.



Sorry to be the bearer of bad news...

Answer 3

Try opening the casing (I'm assuming yours is a desktop) and having a look at the cable connecting from the hard disk to the mother board and also the power supply.



Usually this is a case failing or poor connection. Give it a try....hope it helps.





P/S - If yours is a laptop, please dont attempt to open the casing yourself unless you are very familiar with lappies....please consult a professional.

Answer 4

It is a connection/power issue. Please try to use another power cable and make it sure that it is tightly fitted. If that doesn't work, then change the IDE cable. That might help. As the description given with the question, it seems that the HDD is functional and there is no issue with the OS as well.

Answer 5

Open it and try to check HDD cable , maybe is a little unplugged... i have similar problem with one of my hard drives , when I'm cleaning my PC sometimes I'm touching this cable