Computer just died, what to do?

[melmerby]

Hi all

My main PC just died on me

I've just done a reboot but all I get is

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device

or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key"

 

Problem is It wont boot up and I can't get into the BIOS menu either.

When prompted in the boot up screen the keyboard doesn't do anything.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Cheers

 

Keith

[beast66606]

Get a MAC ? - they never suffer any problems ...

 

Sounds like the disk is fu not working - try disconnecting it and rebooting to see if the bios displays, if it does then you know the disk has gone, if it doesn't then possibly the power supply or even memory are gone.

[uax6]

Sad to say that that's a HD failure. I had it in mine a few months ago.

 

Remember when you rebuild it to make sure you put the OS on one disc, and all the data on another, and then clone the OS disc, which in theory means that you will at least keep your data if the OS disc dies, and the clone can then be put into service...

 

Andy G

Edited February 4, 2018 by uax6

[Irish_R_M]

If it's an older machine you might need a keyboard with a PS/2 socket rather than a USB type, but it sounds like either your primary hard drive has died, or the bios has somehow gone and selected a non-bootable drive, such as the cd drive to start from. First thing to do is check that the cables are all sat comfy from motherboard to drive, even swap out one with the main drive, I've had SATA cables fail for no reason. us posted. 

 

R. 

[letterspider]

Sounds like it may be a KEYBOARD BIOS / BIOS failure

I would get a NAS drive caddy, put your hard drive in and retrieve the data or get another motherboard and try your had drive.

 

I hate to say this as I always forget myself back up, back up and back up again.

 

Good luck

[RFS]

I would try booting off your Windows 10 Repair Disc, or if you don't have one the installation media such as the DVD or thumb drive.  From that you should be able to select repair and at least be able to see if the disk is still working. 

 

Not sure why you can't get into BIOS though.

[Southernman46]

Don't despair yet .................... take it to your local small back-street computer repair shop and the nice geeky man behind the counter might be able to tell you exactly what has happened and maybe be able to repair it or at least get your data out at least onto another external drive ...............

[40F]

Buy another and don`t down load windows 10  

[melmerby]

Not worried about data as most is scattered across several drives.

I'll fix it myself if something has failed. it's partly a home build anyway

I was wondering if the error message suggested something obvious

 

The C: drive is a Mushkin SSD and there are three other HDDs connected

It has 16Gb memory and a seperate 8Gb Graphics card and a Soundblaster card.

The PSU is 750W replacing the original 450W one which failed

 

It's one of these UEFI BIOS systems and normally If one drive is unbootable it tries the next in line

I tried with a USB stick with a new install of WIN 10 (latest version from a couple of weeks ago) and also a DVD with a Windows iso, normally it would read those but not this time.

It doesn't even seem as if it trying to read anything.

 

I had been using the PC last night and I had shut down all the programs I had been using and went to shut it down when the mouse and keyboard stopped responding.

The keyboard is on a USB port via a cable and the mouse is a wireless one via a wireless dongle on another USB port

 

I left it for a few minutes to see whether they would awake but no chance, the usual CTRL+ALT+DEL to find out what's going on obviously wouldn't work.

 

Cheers

 

Keith

[beast66606]

If a drive is faulty it can pull down the power supply which can then cause other issues, disconnect the drives and then see what happens.

[melmerby]

If a drive is faulty it can pull down the power supply which can then cause other issues, disconnect the drives and then see what happens.

Just tried removing the data cable to the SSD and the keyboard sprang into life so I could get in to BIOS settings.

So I changed the boot options and saved, reconnected the cable booted up and went to BIOS again (keyboard was still working!) and reselected the SSD

Saved and reboot - all is fine. Must have been a dirty connection or such like.

 

Whatever it was Windows took longer to start as it seemed to be sorting itself out there are some changes. e.g. Firefox had lost it's most recent history so the fault must had caused Windows to crash just as I was shutting down.

Need to keep an eye on it as my other desktop with SATA drives has had an awful lot of problems with the SATA data connectors.

 

Keith