Won't boot and no hard drive detected in system recovery

I've had my PC for about a year, its a self build, it ran without any
problems until a couple of weeks ago where it started slowing down like
crazy. Unfortunately I was at Uni at the time and my brother didn't tell
me about the issues. It would basically work normally (but a little
slow) and then freeze up every few seconds. One time it failed to start
- I think the error message was that the boot files were corrupt or
something, but this was a one off.

After about 3 weeks of slow behaviour it started doing the following:

I turn it on and it tries to start up. The green microsoft vista progess
bar comes up for a for a few seconds, then a blue screen of death
flashes up (too quick to read anything on it) and the PC restarts.
If i try to boot into safemode it freezes while it lists the drivers
its loading. The last driver displayed is consistently crcdisk.sys. (I
have tried all the safe modes and last good config to no avail).

So, I put in the recovery disk, choose the language and click on Repair
Windows.
The next dialog box is called System Recovery Options. The problem I
get here is that there are no operating systems in the list. It says i
should look for hard drive drivers, but I don't know how to find them.
My drive is a 1tb seagate barracuda

Wierdly when I choose the install option as if i was going to do a
complete re-install it did come up with a 1tb drive on the options and
the drive did pass the short seatools test. When I tried the long
seatools test the program froze before the test even started.

The hard drive has a lot of photos and work which I don't want to lose
so I am reluctant to do a complete re-install.


Please help! =(

Mukund

kwond wrote:
> I've had my PC for about a year, its a self build, it ran without
> any problems until a couple of weeks ago where it started slowing
> down like crazy. Unfortunately I was at Uni at the time and my
> brother didn't tell me about the issues. It would basically work
> normally (but a little slow) and then freeze up every few seconds.
> One time it failed to start - I think the error message was that
> the boot files were corrupt or something, but this was a one off.
>
> After about 3 weeks of slow behaviour it started doing the
> following:
>
> I turn it on and it tries to start up. The green microsoft vista
> progess bar comes up for a for a few seconds, then a blue screen of
> death flashes up (too quick to read anything on it) and the PC
> restarts.
> If i try to boot into safemode it freezes while it lists the drivers
> its loading. The last driver displayed is consistently crcdisk.sys.
> (I have tried all the safe modes and last good config to no avail).
>
> So, I put in the recovery disk, choose the language and click on
> Repair Windows.
> The next dialog box is called System Recovery Options. The problem I
> get here is that there are no operating systems in the list. It
> says i should look for hard drive drivers, but I don't know how to
> find them. My drive is a 1tb seagate barracuda
>
> Wierdly when I choose the install option as if i was going to do a
> complete re-install it did come up with a 1tb drive on the options
> and the drive did pass the short seatools test. When I tried the
> long seatools test the program froze before the test even started.
>
> The hard drive has a lot of photos and work which I don't want to
> lose so I am reluctant to do a complete re-install.
>
>
> Please help! =(

First, let's address this:
"The hard drive has a lot of photos and work which I don't want to
lose so I am reluctant to do a complete re-install."

Are they really that important? They were not important enough (obviously)
for you to figure out some way to have more than one copy of them -
backups - before the issue; so how important are they really - or is this a
case of, "Didn't know the importance/value until it was too late (almost)"?

Backups - you hear people harp on this topic all the time - unlikely this is
the first time you have heard it (or may have even told others about it
yourself) - but it's so easy to ignore until you realize it's too late.
External USB hard drive and a batch script - or something like a Seagate
Replica that just does it for you? <$100 U.S. long ago would have eased
your worries right now, eh?


Anyway...

Sounds like the hard disk drive could be dying. Use something like a BartPE
or Ultimate Windows Boot CD to boot up, access the files and copy off what
you need to some external media before you do anything else. In other
words - backup your stuff.

Then get the hard disk drive manufacturer's diagnostics utility (probably
have to make a bootable CD out of it) and use it to determine if the drive
needs help.

You probably should figure that much out before you continue on.