Model Railway Forum

Strange but true !

After few years of constant performance, my PC now fails to pickup the system disc! Just offers options to continue via a number of choices all of which all work.

If you believe all you read, this problem MAY occur after a MSoft upgrade.

Why am I not surprised ?

Following geek advice from the web.

Rgds.

If your PC is not seeing your system disk when you boot then the system has not got as far as loading Windows. Had this problem a while back with a disk that had been used for several years without issue but it had indeed failed.

I would suggest loading the BIOS program and checking whether it is still being seen by the hardware.

You could try booting from the Windows install disk if you have one and select Repair Windows. You may also have created a Windows Repair disk or stick as part of the backup process which should do the same thing. If the disk is totally dead there isnt much you can do about it except swap it out and re-install Windows. If its not totally dead and you can get into command prompt run chkdsk c: /f /r /x. This will try and find errors and relocate bad sectors if it can. Good luck.

I had a similar problem some time ago on a Win 10 machine that had been updated from Win 7 and my immediate action with that PC based on past experience was to take the cover off and reseat all the connections. This worked a few times then it refused to boot one day and indeed it was a failed disk.

Unfortunately I only had the original Win7 recovery disk, but having gotten that loaded to a new HDD I invoked Win10 Update Assistant (free download) which checked my digital keycode for that machine against MS records and loaded Win 10 back on for me.

Usually as long as either the motherboard or HDD serials match records it is assumed it is the same machine having undergone repairs.

My answer to the problem would be to go get new Dell desktop. If you have had the old one more than 5/6 years it is time to replace it. On average.
Dell also in my experience have the best after sales service. I am sure somebody will say, Rubbish. I can only talk from my experience. Have been using Dell now for over twenty years. Only ever had 3 problems, and they were sorted out in record time. Had about 4 new ones in that time.
Also had 2 HP laptops and both were nothing but trouble.

FWIWorth my fault turned out to be caused by the lithium battery on the motherboard failing. A new CR3032 button battery and problem solved.

My apologies to Msoft for taking their name in vain!

Rgds