Help my computer won’t boot up

[Wengimus]

Hey guys,

It's been a life time since I was last on here but I need your help; my computer has kind of died!

LoL I’ll start from the beginning so I hope you’re sitting comfortably.

I was playing 2142 for the first time online; I was getting what I thought was lag, so I came out of the game and lowered the graphic settings, then went back online and the same thing happen again; really jerky screen movements. I tired to come back out again but it just froze. So I left it, went to make a cuppa, came back and had a plain blue screen.

So I rebooted my computer and ever since then I have been getting the following screen

ID____Mode________Size________Tracking Mode_____Status
1_____2+0 Stripe___148710M____18079/255/63_____Offline

(**The above bit flashes**)

Problem detected with array 1

Press <Ctrl – F> to enter the FastBuild
Press <ESC> to continue booting

It waits for a couple of seconds and then goes to the next screen

Reboot and Select a proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

The setup I had was RAID 0 spread over to raptors

So that’s my story and my pain, I have no idea where to start on this or if it’s at all fixable. So if anyone can help, your input would be most appreciated……….

[mandrake]

Hi Weng

it appears that your drive may have completely failed - what OS do you have?...and some other specs on your system will help out. have you tried resetting the Master boot Record on your system disk?..use your winxp disc to boot from and use the repair console(if possible) and type "fixmbr" without quotes.

thats one idea - another would be that the blue screen is frequently an indication of a bad/corrupt video driver and/or bad/damaged RAM modules

try to carefully remove all components first - test the power supply and board - then reinstall the CPU/heat/fan and then the RAM

if you have onboard video use this otherwise reinsert your card and start up -

write back to find more ideas

X

[Sema4]

I would check to make sure both drives are actually powering up before running any other tests, as mandrake says, it sounds like one of your drives has failed.

I also run raptors in raid and I have seen this same thing before my self...

To test if the drives are actually spinning up, with the computer turned off, pop the side off the case and locate the power cable for each drive, there are 2 cables going to each raptor, a wide one and a narrow one, the power one is the wide one and should be easy to spot as the cable will lead back to the power supply, where as the other smaller cable will lead to the motherboard.

Remove the power cable from both drives, then start the computer up. It will post and then report 'no system disk - press any key' or something similar, thats normal, don't press any keys, just leave it like that for the time being.

At this stage, you can connect one of the power cables to one of the drives, you should hear it spin up, listen for any griding noises or repeated clunk type noise that goes on over and over and over, this could be a sign the drive has physically failed, a normal drive should speed up to operating speed and make a few quiet clicks, then all you should hear is the quiet whine of the driving spinning.

Once you have tested drive 1, remove the power cable from it and wait for it to go quiet, then try powering up the second drive, again, listen to the sounds it makes, if both drives sound the same, then at least you know the drives are powering up ok. Power the system off now (usually pressing and holding the power button for 5 seconds will turn the system off)

Next, replace the power leads to both drives, then remove and reconnect the sata cables to each drive, just to re-seat them, and then power on the system, if your really lucky, the act of removing and reconnecting the drives, may fix the problem, it has for me in the past...

If not however, then carry out the tests suggested by Mandrake, even though drives spin up and don't make any nasty griding noises, it's still possible that the logic has failed or the sata cable has failed or worst case, the sata controller on the motherboard has failed, but thats very unlikely, the drive and the cable are much more likely.

Post back with your findings if you need further help, good luck...

[Wengimus]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for your replies

I should of mention that the screen that I now get is black with white writing.

The board I'm using is the ASUS A8V Deluxe with the VIA K8T800Pro chipset. I have checked the cables and physically unplugged them and re plugged them.

If I go into the FastBuild options can see both the hard drives. If I unplug one and boot it up the opposite one will show, this happens with either one.

So it would seem the hard drives could be ok?

The only thing I have notice is that in one of FastBuild options where it shows both the hard drives and there total size, the status is set to Offline, which it won’t let me change……….

I was kind of wondering if there is any chance of getting anything back but i guess if i wanted that I shouldn't use Raid 0

I will try everything that has been mention, got a mate coming around tomorrow with some spare parts so I should be able to test everything

Let me know if anyone can think of everything else to try

Thanks again for the help

[Sema4]

Did you try the spin up tests I outlined ? simply checking the screen for the presence of drives is not enough when your dealing with a raid array...

Because the computer knows about the existence of the array, it is expecting to see it when it starts up, this will cause the messages your seeing, in particular, the 'offline' message, caused by the computer expecting to see 2 drives and not finding one or other of them, so it thinks they are off line...

The power up tests are quite important to establish if the drives are in fact spinning up, and are doing so correctly... until this test is done, there is not much point in carrying out any other tests...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Might be worth running diagnostics downloaded from the HDs manufacturer website - that would deffo prove if they are faulty or not.

[Sema4]

Might be worth running diagnostics downloaded from the HDs manufacturer website - that would deffo prove if they are faulty or not.

Diagnostics are ideal when you are dealing with single drives, however, I have never found a utility yet that can successfully talk to each individual drive of a RAID array as they are not controlled through a standard SATA controller as the diagnostic software is expecting, but instead, they are controlled through a RAID controller...

Perhaps that's down to the nvidia chipset in my ASUS motherboard, I don't know, but my board only see's the single array (which has 4 drives in it), not the individual drives, unless I actually go in to the BIOS and open the RAID utility... but then I just get 'on line or offline' messages as described in this thread as the RAID controller is looking for multiple drives, and any it doesn't find are shown as off line...

Certainly the Western Digital utility can't hurt to try it, but I would expect it to come up with an error connecting to the drives when you run it cause that's what I get when I run it on mine...

[shaithis]

Disconnect the drives from the array and plug them into a standard SATA port to run diagnostics.

[Sema4]

Disconnect the drives from the array and plug them into a standard SATA port to run diagnostics.

Yeah, that will work providing the drive actually spins up, but there is little point in running diagnostics if it doesn't... I have been running raid array's for years and if it was me, I would check that first... but I give up.. good luck with it either way around...