Rod said:
Likely you have a warmup fault and thats why its working now,
its warmed up now. Those are usually a bad solder joint etc.
you're a good man Rod, always there to add some insight, much
appreciated by us light weights. if I could bore you for a minute or so
longer.
if you remember a few weeks back I had that 'reboot and select proper
boot device ...etc' problem that would happen from a very cold boot so I
kept it on standby (with fans running mode) for a week because it became
harder and harder to get to kick on. was very busy back then and waiting
for the replacement drive, and then no time to play computer repair guy
so it was a awhile and why I never got back to that thread.
any way, called Maxtor the following Mon, the Maxtor guy said it could
maybe be the OS and to do a low level format. I said, you mean a clean
install, and he said yes. I said, well if I'm going to go through all
that trouble then send me a replacement and I'll do that to a new drive
if I have to as more than likely as some have suggested to me online
that if it were software related I would be getting software related
error messages.
he agreed, sent me the replacement and I then used (upon your
suggestions from the past) Acronis True Image, which I got version 8 for
like nothing. I'll say here this bootable CD is almost error less,
probably because it all done before the OS loads and runs interference.
I have cloned, restored a bunch of times now from that and its works
great. Norton Ghost is horrid compared to this which I barely was able
to clone off of it once a few months back after a weekend of hair pulling.
anyway, I did a clone, started the replacement and it worked for a
while, and then, I got that same message again. oh boy! at this point, I
stuck my original HD that came with the machine back in there with the
old setup still on there and it worked fine, no problem with cold boots
or anything?? now what, motherboard (no noticeable cap problems like you
suggested to look for, no visible signs of any MB trouble) .... power,
maybe.
so, knowing I had a safety net, I put the replacement drive back in
there after a couple of days to get to the root of the problem. well, it
continued to do the same thing but then it started to just shut down and
reboot on its own after it had started up for few minutes or so. not
good. then it started giving me an error message 'error boot device,
press ctrl-alt-Adel' and that would be it. it wouldn't start up at all,
as I guess now I had moved up to file corruption as well. so, using that
trusty True Image bootable CD I easily restored the drive but that new
problem came back. after the second time I noticed this time the BIOS
was showing the HD as some incoherent lettering. now the system is not
even recognizing the drive like it did in the past for the original
error message.
so this made me wonder if the reason the drives seem to work when I
switch them around, unhook them, then reattach them is something to with
the fact that I am monkeying around with the cable .... bad cable, could
it be that simple???
that was it!!! replaced that thing and now no problems with the
replacement drive or my original newer drive. sometimes it really is the
very obvious and yet no one at Maxtor though to suggest that to me as
well???
so, out of curiosity, one last question. I now have the replacement
drive in my computer running and my original drive I bought a few months
back is fine. soon I have to send 1 of these drives back to eliminate a
charge with the exchange RMA I am using. the replacement drive is a
refurbished drive. I could easily use True Image to clone this drive to
my original and send either drive back, Maxtor already told me they
don't care which one as long as they get one in 30 days.
what drive would you keep? one that had a problem and was refurbished,
which could be for anything, even something like my issue that was sent
back and nothings wrong, or something internal fixed as I did notice a
little dab of excess sealant around the center, back of the drive
casing, probably indicating they did go inside. or, my original drive, a
few months old and relatively brand new. both have the warranty. is it a
tossup??? knowing what you know about these things, what would you do?
