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SMART disk drive error-can't access Advanced Boot Options repair mode
My system is showing an internal hard drive error and F8 advanced boot options page doesn't appear to exist anymore (lost recovery via F8). That limits my troubleshooting.
The system is a Dell Inspiron 560 desktop with core 2 quad Q8300 CPU at 2.5 ghz. 6.144 GB of RAM with DDR3 SDRAM. It's 3 years old with Windows 7 Home Premium. The computer is basically used only for surfing the web and has 98% of the RAM free. When the system was purchased 3 years ago it came with no recovery disks or any b/u software. I'm not really worried about losing the data on it as other than the Windows Operating system, there's not much that couldn't be resurrected from the web. This chain of events started 2 weeks ago when I received a windows "Boot Configuration data file is missing required info error." A system restore solved most of that issue and allowed access to Windows but I was still left with numerous script errors that locked me out of some frequently used web sites/pages. At that point I followed an on-line solution to properly repartition the boot config. Upon doing that and restarting, I lost the system Boot Manager and could not start the computer at all ("no boot device available"). I had hosed myself as no doubt my tinkering in the boot config mode wiped out the needed boot management for a proper reboot.
At that point I took it to a local repair tech who brought the computer back to factory condition, fixed the boot config, reloaded all software, updated windows w/ current updates, and loaded an American Megatrends Bios page that I had never used before. After 3 years of degrade the system probably needed to be scrubbed clean. Following the work the system ran flawlessly and better than I can ever recall....for about 24 hours. I could finally run Utube videos w/o lockups after 10-15 minutes and things like spell checker magically appeared again on numerous sites. But, then while reading a common website page I've accessed every day for 2 years, I received a SMART warning saying that windows detected a hard disk problem and it could fail at any time (ie back up your data). I get is warning about 15-30 min now. I ran some diagnostics through the AMI startup BIOS page and it identified Sata Port 0 as being "SMART capable and Status Bad." Also "AHCI Port 0 device error." I ran check disk repair via Windows and it found some clusters bad in 4 of 5 (file data - file 82565). Windows replaced those bad cluster. Everything else was reported as clean.
My next step was to run diagnostics via the advanced boot options page (ie computer repair) but it is apparently inaccessible via F8 or F5. My computer tech didn't know why that feature was not available to me. I've yet to bring the computer back to them figuring I don't want to double up my $175 cost w/o exhausting things I can do from home. I'm thinking the advanced boot options page was lost in the reloading and addition of the American Megatrends Bios page. That's the only real program change on this reload. My computer has always run straight to windows login page automatically. Now it stops at the AMI BIOS page and you have to hit F1 to continue the startup (or select F2, F3, F12 for other choices). But, regardless of where I hit the F8 key (or F5) during the S/U process I cannot get an advanced boot options page to troubleshoot further (before AMI loads, after AMI loads, before or after the Dell splash screen, before-after-during the Windows icon shows up, etc.). I've done that quite often in the past and never had a problem using it....until this new AMI startup feature was added. I tried some work arounds listed on the net to no avail. I'm not a computer guy by any means, but I can follow a script when presented.
Based on the error code I received Tuesday it probably is true I have a hard drive with limited life left. Could be days or weeks. With only surfing use maybe it's years? I tried loading HD Sentinel to find the exact cause of the SMART error but that didn't load properly and I canceled it. Today I backed up my minimal files and documents that I have on to Mozy free (<2GB). I have a ton of web page shortcuts that I didn't want to lose, especially hundreds of financial charts from trading sites I frequent. 40 MB total in shortcuts, photos, and a documents. Next step is to pick up a backup external hard drive (300-500 GB) so I can put my whole system in backup. That's something I never did before. I have a 720 GB hard drive but only about 50 GB is being used. After already paying a tech $170 to fully reload my system last week it looks like I have to do that again soon once the internal hard drive is replaced with a new one. Probably should have just bought a new computer. The tech said they did about 40 reboots to restore my system to normal. Maybe all the slamming it received since the original boot config error just did the disk in? There were no recent power surges but I don't have the best electric reliability around here and my system has crashed on loss of power dozens of times over the past 3 years (no battery b/u). My previous Windows 98 computer on "dial up" with 1.1 GB ran for 8 year without any disk problems on the same unreliable power.
My basic questions now are:
1. Is there a workaround for my F8 issue or do I need to get rid of the AMI BIOS page? The recovery partition that runs this may be gone. It stinks not having this feature available for troubleshooting. It probably wouldn't help me any even if I could access it but I'd like to try. Found one work around in an older post but you need to enter the windows\system32> command prompt which I can't do. My system only accepts command prompts for individual users from the "start" button.
2. Is there a decent free on line disk sentinel I can load that could isolate my disk problem further? It might just be a less critical problem such as "overheating" or? I did clean out the computer thoroughly of all dust. Fans are all working fine.
3. Should I just forget all the above and simply put in a new internal drive? Or am I missing something that could make this all go away with a little more troubleshooting/software repair? In googling similar problems some people seemed able to walk away from a similar disk error w/o replacing it. Other than this disk error popping up every 15-30 min my system has no other degrade issues that I can see such as lock ups, forced shutdowns, blue or black screens, slowdowns, etc. Just the F8 problem. And that could have been there since the recovery since I didn't need to go and use it. The system doesn't have any real load on it from gaming, tons of movies/music/videos, big spread sheets or files, etc. It's basically opening up fresh web pages each day and they closing them out each day.
I've come here a few times before in the past and ended up being able to fix the problem with the help received (BSOD, ram failure, etc.). Maybe I can get lucky again. Thanks.
Brian
Last edited by Brian Keefe; 10 Oct 2013 at 20:11.