STALKER killed my computer

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

I bought STALKER from EB games for $10 the other day (half price sales FTW). I installed it and it ran fine. Not a bad game I might add.

However, upon hitting a loading screen after a few hours of play the loading bar froze. At first I assumed it had frozen and waited patiently to see if it would sort itself out.

After about 10 mins I was contemplating restarting the machine when I heard strange sounds coming from the tower. The loading screen dissappeared and was replaced with a blue screen of death that lasted not even a second.

At this point I was quite concerned and even moreso when the computer rebooted itself without any intervention by me. It went through the usual startup procedures but hit a roadblock when it couldn’t seem to detect the hard drive. It then checked the DVD drive and when nothing was found there it prompted me to insert “boot media and press any key”.

I’ve restarted the thing a couple of times and it hits the same thing. I’ve interrupted the boot process and tried to find the hard drive, but all I see is the two disk drives. Nothing comes up in the BIOS either.

I can’t seem to find my XP disk so I can’t even boot the bloody thing, but I’m sadly considering that the hard drive has just died on me.

So, has STALKER killed my computer or has the hard drive gone cactus? I’m not to experienced with this kind of thing so I’d appreciate any help.

#2

Firstly Stalker only $10 now? So gonna buy tomorrow.

Secondly, the HDD shouldn’t just die, check the cables and what not first.

If it’s still not working, try putting it into another PC and see if it can be read.

#3

Sounds to me like the hard drive has failed, they are perfectly capable of suddenly blowing up like that (they are, after all, small mechanical devices that spin things really fast).

#4

That part is mostly normal… on critical crashes it will often reboot automatically.

Looks like a HD failure, yeah…
You could try putting the HD on another system, and try a disk scan on it

#5

I recommend turning the automatical restart off when system crashes, helps a lot when troubleshooting :
https://teamtutorials.com/other-tutorials/force-computer-to-show-blue-screen-details

But I guess it’s too late, I think the hard drive’s busted.

#6

Yeah, your HD is probably broken.

As for STALKER doing it, I think it was just bad timing.

I have STALKER and haven’t had any problems with it.

#7

It could be the HDD or a motherboard failure, parts of a motherboard can die and the system can still POST.

Check cables, try a different HDD/HDD in another machine, if that dosn’t work, the board could have died.

#8

I’ve taken the case of to get a better look and it appears that the strange metallic clicking sound I hear is originating from the HDD. Sounds pretty fatal to me. All the cables are in so I’m gonna try installing the thing in another system next.

I don’t think the motherboard is screwed because the boot process works perfectly and it detects the DVD drives fine.

#9

Think positively; if it is dead, Hard Drives are the second cheapest hardware item to replace in a computer, behind RAM.

#10

OH GOD

CLICK OF DEATH :fffuuu:

#11

Of course. Now all I need to do is find that Windows installation disc… :fffuuu:

#12

You can get one off a torrent or something… if you have a valid key it shouldn’t be a problem. Just make sure it’s the same version (home/professional ; SP#)

#13

Do you have the option to get into safe mode, or do you not even get that for?

#14

It’ll go to the main motherboard screen that searches for the primary and secondary devices. After failing to find anything other than the DVD drives it will proceed to the boot up screen where it will display the hardware. Here it will say that it has failed to boot and requests bootable media to be inserted into the DVD drive.

I looked at the hardware screen and the HDD lists as 0 MB so I’m assuming it’s rooted.

#15

If the hard drive is making clicky noises, it’s almost certainly unrecoverable. Usually when that starts happening, BIOS can’t even detect the drive. edit: bah, :ninja:ed

Baconeggs: HDs these days have pretty long warranty periods, you might want to see if yours is covered. For example, the 1TB Seagate drives in my server have a 5-year warranty.

#16

WAIT. Don’t write the hard drive off yet.

Seal it in a zip lock bag and chuck it in the freezer for a few hours, overnight if you can. Then try and recover any data you might have had. THEN write it off. Trust me, it works.

#17

…

If you can explain the science behind this, I’ll believe it.

#18

I believe it’s because of the way the components expand and contract in response to heat and cold. Sometime it can cause the heads to unseize themselves.

It’s pretty risky but if you’ve nothing to lose, why not give it a shot.

#19

Just make sure to squeeze out all the air you can, or you’ll get frozen moisture in there, which I believe could be pretty bad

#20

Try a bootable CD (Hiren’s boot CD is ideal) and open up something that can look through your drives. Hiren’s boot CD has a bootable version of minixp on it, and it’ll display the drives available for you, maybe you can access them that way.

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