okay, I need help

[mickeym]

I also don't want to hear anything about how crappy Windows Vista is, because I KNOW this. It's not the OS I would've chosen for myself.

My computer got stuck looping on Windows Updates. Apparently I'm not the only one this is happening to.

However, in trying to get it to unloop, I've done...something. I don't even know what I pushed, but here's the screen I start up with now:

1.0.3

Main Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 65 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
Memory Testing: 2030592K OK+ 64M shared memory(Installed Memory: 2097152K)

SATA 0 : ST3250410AS 3.AAC
SATA 1 : HL-DT-STDVD+-RW GSA-H31N B109
SATA 2 : None
SATA 3 : None

Diskette drive 0 seek failure




Strike F1 to retry boot , F2 for setup utility
06/15/2007-1.0.3


So--what does all that mean? cormallen was trying to walk me through doing a 'repair' with my disk that came with the computer... but I'm not getting any options for 'repair'. If I press F1 I get the "Windows Error Recovery" screen that gives me the options of Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt or Start Windows Normally. And Safe Mode just bypasses the "Updating Windows Configurations" message and goes straight to "Shutting Down". And then it starts all over -- now with the added fun of that screen I typed out up above.

Can ANYONE help me? If you think you can walk me through whatever, we can do it via IM or phone; I'll pay for the phone call. I just. I'm this close <> to losing it completely, right now.

Comments

[nopseud]

Hmm. Actually, I do have an idea. The 'Diskette drive 0 seek failure' error sounds like it's looking for a non-existant disk to boot from, and combined with the fact that you were doing stuff to the bios, I wonder if you've told it to look for a disk that doesn't exist, like a floppy disk drive.

Go back into the bios setup with F2, and look for options to do with disks or drives. I can't say exactly what it would look like, but somewhere you should be able to find the list of drives which it thinks exist on the machine.


ETA: I've done some further checking, and, given that the serial number *is* for a hard disk, some more checking after that. There seems to be a known issue with Seagate drives failing, in a way which sounds suspiciously like your failure -- the drive suddenly becomes undetectable at bootup. So quite possibly it's absolutely nothing to do with you, just a disk failure.

I can't say for sure this is what happened, but the serial number it's reporting is for a Seagate. Maybe you could check in the manual for the exact serial number? The type which has been failing are the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives.