[jasonlee91]

hi everyone
i apologize for having to bother everyone again, but i am yet again stuck in fixing one of my friends computers.
so there is this desktop computer and apparently this is the third time this kind of issue happened.
The computer would work completly fine but then all of a sudden one day just get stuck at loading screen.
they had the store fix it before but this time i figured id try it out
currently when the computer turns on before it loads vista, the bios gives an option to boot normally or repair disk
booting normally makes everything go black and stuck
and the repair disk apparently takes hours and after it does the same thing
so i stuck in his windows 7 cd and tried to reinstall windows from boot but it would get stuck at the part where it asks what hard drive i want to install the OS on and get stuck at the "Starting Setup" page
so i brought one of my SATA hard drives that i know works(the stock one is SATA too) and i plugged it in and now the computer sticks at the very first screen where it just says "Acer"
i dont know if i plugged in the hard drive wrong but i thought there was supposed to be no jumpers for SATA hardrives and optical drives?
so i tried to run ubuntu off a stick but the usb drive that i know works says "check for a medium" (sorry i cant access the computer right now its not veyr specific)
ive tried unplugging the ram cards and pci cards and running with as least as possible but no difference
so is this a hard drive issue? when the hard drives are unplugged then the windows cd works well but there is no hard drive in the list to select from.
and if it is a hard drive issue for the first hard drive, why wont my home hard drive boot on this computer?

sorry the post is so long
if someone could point me in the right direction i would greatly appreciate it

 

[epshatto]

I wonder if the fixmbr command might help you. Using the Windows disk, enter the command prompt and type bootrec /fixmbr

Also try bootrec /fixboot

Also, are you able to run diagnostic software on the drive in question? Try using a bootable disk to run software and see if it reports any errors.

 

[jasonlee91]

How do I use the windows cd to boot into command prompt?

 

[epshatto]

You enter BIOS setup screen and set boot priority. Select the optical drive as first boot device, put the CD in the drive, save the settings, and exit. The PC will reboot and boot into the CD. Select "Repair my computer" (or something like that), and then select the Command Prompt option.

 

[jasonlee91]

it didnt work
ahh
i dont understand why putting a new hard drive in makes the comptuer unable to boot?
why is it that i cant just boot from cd, format hdd and install os?
what should i be looking in to?

 

[epshatto]

I'm thinking this must be a motherboard controller problem.

Did you try running diagnostic software on the drives? If you're not booting off any drives, including ones that you know work, the conclusion I draw is that the motherboard is the source of the error.