Computer Help

[Wilford Brimley]

My desktop won't boot and the diagnostic run said I've got a memory problem. Is there any way I can access the hard drive with my laptop? I just want to get my mp3's back. Help me please, the is making my diabeetus go through the roof!!

[Vagabond]

Have a look at hard drives enclosure kits like these:

http://www.shopping.com/xGS-usb_external_drive_enclosure_kit

If the drives are ok when just get an external harddrive enclosure kit ( without drive ) with usb or firewire.

You should be able to put the drives into it and access the files from your laptop.

Just have a look at your PC first:

1.

Be careful which one you buy - there are enclosure kits for 2.5 inch drives and for 3.5 inch.

The usual size of a drive of a desktop PC is IDE.

Wikipedia - hard drive form factors

2.

Look at the cable which are connected to the drive, there are so standards:

IDE

SATA

The enclosure kit must have the right size and the right connectors.

[unbillievable]

remove one of your ram chips and reboot, if it doesnt work, put it back and remove the other chip and boot again. If it still doesn't work, try the enclosure kit idea.

[robpanama]

Wilford Brimley (1/27/2008)

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My desktop won't boot and the diagnostic run said I've got a memory problem. Is there any way I can access the hard drive with my laptop? I just want to get my mp3's back. Help me please, the is making my diabeetus go through the roof!!

How To Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6syezOHJ2Q

[nativefalcon]

unbillievable (1/27/2008)

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remove one of your ram chips and reboot, if it doesnt work, put it back and remove the other chip and boot again. If it still doesn't work, try the enclosure kit idea.

what he said, :P but you can get a connector that will go to a USB for a hard drive cheaper then a enclosure, it depends, is it new SATA or OLD, IDE? Also what was the memory error? Like a blue screen that says STOP 0X0000000A?

[Vagabond]

unbillievable (1/27/2008)

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remove one of your ram chips and reboot, if it doesnt work, put it back and remove the other chip and boot again. If it still doesn't work, try the enclosure kit idea.

**** - i work with pc´s everyday - i program them, i´m also the administrator at my work but how could i forget about this ???? *scratching head*

in german we have a saying:

One cannot see the forrest because of all the trees !

Actually there´s another idea - if the PC still boots you can locate the defect RAM:

Download one of the precompiled ISOs of MemTest86 at http://www.memtest.org/ ( its less than a 1 MB ! ).

Burn the ISO to a CD and put that CD into the pc and boot your pc from it. You might need to hit F8 / F10 / F12 for the boot menu and manually choose CD.

Once you boot from the CD the program will start instantly and test the RAM.

This might take some hours but you should let the program at least finish 2 complete cycles.

It will create a list of all memory adresses which are defect or suspicious.

These adresses will be hexadecimal values like 0x123145 ( see also the screenshot ).

Now try to find the lowest and the highest memory adress.

Example:

You have 1 GB RAM with 2 RAMs so each RAM = 512 MB.

lowest adress:

0x28000000 = 640 MB

highest adress:

0x28F00000 = 655 MB

= defect chip = Chip in Bank 1 ( most Mainboard cound the banks from 0 so 0 is the first, 1 the secound, 2 the third and 3 the fourth - in many cases you´ll find something like DIMM0 near the bank which mean its memory bank 0 ).

Another example:

lowest adress:

0x7800000 = 120 MB

highest adress:

0x9C00000 = 156 MB

= defect chip in bank 0

Another example:

lowest adress:

0x7800000 = 120 MB

highest adress:

0x28000000 = 640 MB

= defect chip in bank 0 AND 1

Hope this helps.