AAARRRGGGGG!!! My computer crashed again! second time in less than a month....

both times I lost control and then it came up as "missing operating system" First time the guy I bought it from un-installed then re-installed, worked fine till yesterday. Now he's checking hard drive and battery. I CAN"T F*CKING AFFORD THIS! this computer is less than 1 year old. My other one was 8 years old never a problem, just needed more of everything.

I can remember when I needed a new computer and just went out and bought one.

sounds like the hard drive is going bad. If it's less than a year old, is it still under warranty?

Well, if they don't, it wouldn't help, because this is the likely cause.

Apple. It just works... until it doesn't.

but a bad hard drive is a bad hard drive no matter the operating system.

Actually, depending on where the problem is, the GRUB boot software could help.

Also, again depending on where the problem is, if you take an Ubuntu Live CD, it can sometimes get a Windows installation to boot when Windows' own preliminary bootloader has crapped out.

;)

...your hard drive is faulty.

Hard drives that are faulty but not catastrophically so can often be reformatted and have an OS installed on them, however, due to mechanical/electrical failures in the drive heads and mechanisms, data won't be written properly or won't be able to be read properly. This happened to me when I had my PC running when my AC was on the blink one summer. The HD overheated and failed. The OS was unreadable and it wouldn't boot. I was able to reinstall, but it took a crap less than a couple of weeks later as the damage was already done.

One of the most telltale signs of an HD that's about to cause you heartbreak is a clicking sound coming from it that is louder than what you hear during normal operation. That sound is the drive heads banging against the stops when it encounters a read or write error. When this happens the drive attempts to recalibrate the head positions by forcing them to the stops before attempting a reread. Even if it manages to recover, it is a good sign that your drive is headed for a disaster.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. I know how it can be having to get a computer fixed when you don't have the money.

was just "fixed" in June for the same problem and it didn't work.

One with this logo on it...

Sid

and thoughtful, well engineered designs.

My guess is Mr. System Builder skimped on the hdd, reasoning that his customer would never know...

but even the mainstream hdd manufacturers have failures. If I recall, there was a problem with Seagates in Macbooks a couple years ago.

My point was that an hdd failure is not an Apple vs PC issue, but is an hdd issue.

Sid

To me, the most important point is that homebuilt systems are not ideal unless one has the knowledge necessary to troubleshoot/fix/upgrade them one's self!

I had the motherboard go on an ACER at work, that was about 8 months old. The motherboard and hard drive were replaced at no cost at all.

Good luck. :hi:

Sid

Sometimes it is just random luck.

Every HDD will fail on average they last a long time but like a lottery some last a decade and some last a week.