Black_Cat

That's what I figured. I've gotten the most important stuff off the drive, which was my main concern. Thanks for the help, everyone.

Here are the results from the Western Digital diagnostic utility. Quick Test: Test completed with read element failure Error/Status Code : 0007 Extended Test: Too many errors found - Please contact technical support Error/Status Code : 0225

It was the power cable. I switched it with the one I used for old internal CD ROM and now the drive is registering and booting up. However it's lagging so I'm running the utility (saved important files). I'll post results when done.

Is there a way to retrieve the data at least?

SATA and power cables are connected. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the pins. Also re-confirmed drive model wd3200aaks WD Caviar SE16. Should I try switching both cables or is that not wise?

Okay, so I finally made the boot CD and ran it. It says "No Western Digital Drive was found ". Results read: Non-WD Drive Error/Status Code 0201

Thanks for all the links guys. Sorry for the hold up. I'm a bit stuck on getting a CD burned (using work computer is out of the question since installations need admin approval). I'm going to try a friend's computer tomorrow. I tried a bootable usb using Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS but that gave me an error (0132). Then again the usb drive seems to be sharing the same letter drive as my hard disk so l don't even know if I'm doing it right.

Drive manufacturer is Western Digital. Model no. WD3200AAKS. Exactly how would I go about making a bootable CD. Is it just a matter of copying the files to a CD and then setting comp to boot from CD? Or something more complicated? OS is Windows XP w service pack 3 for future reference.

No option for diagnosing came up. It just made an attempt to boot from the Utility Partition. It reads: Boot from Utility Partition ... Not Found... No Boot Device available, press Enter key to retry SATA -0: Installed SATA -1: Installed SATA -4: None SATA -5: None From the above it seems like the hard drive is registering to some extent (it's in the SATA -0 socket). However whenever I check under Standard CMOS Features in Setup that SATA is simply blank (instead of saying [None] like the other empty sockets). Not sure if that means anything to you but I thought I should mention it.

Boot Menu screen: Select a Boot First Device >Removable - Floppy Disk >Hard Disk -SATA 0 : -Bootable Add-in Cards CD ROM Utility Partition

Pressing F12 takes me into the Boot Menu; I see no mention diagnostics. Is it possible the option might be in Setup somewhere? When I press F2 itbrings me into the Phoenix -AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility. On the left side of the screen it lists: -System Info -Standard Card Features -Advanced BIOS Features -Boot Device Configuration -Advanced Chipset Features -Integrated Peripherals Right side of the screen: -Power Managent -Load Defaults -Set Supervisor Password -Set User Password -Save and Exit -Exit without Saving Also BIOS version is 1.0.18 if that helps.

Dell Inspiron 530s dual core 667MHz. Not sure on how to run diognostics without booting up.

Hello, I need some help troubleshooting a boot up issue. I did not get to run a scan so I don't know if this is virus or malware related (though it started while I was on the internet. Anyway, the computer froze and gave me a stop error (lost the error number that I wrote down) so I restarted the computer and the check disk scan came up. It also ended up freezing. This happened a couple of times so I finally decided to just do a System Restore since I started to suspect it really was a virus. I stepped away for a bit and saw that the comp had restarted . Some more issues with loading deskstop but after a couple of restarts the deskstop finally loaded and I recieved a message that System Restore was completed.. For about half an hour everything seemed fine then comp froze, continuous beep sounded and I turned it off. Haven't been able to boot from hard drive since then. Attempts to boot from CD give me stop error 0x0000007f. I have tried different SATA ports and drive never shows no matter where I put it. I can hear it attempt to do something so I don't know if the drive has gone bad. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Everything seems to be running fine now. I'll follow your suggestion and keep the Revo and CCleaner (already got Malware Pro ). Thank you so much for your help (and the links).

Ran the dds but it still popped up randomly again a couple of hours later.