PC Pals Forum

Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: ben21 on March 13, 2006, 16:24

Title: hard disk
Post by: ben21 on March 13, 2006, 16:24

hi am trying to boot my computer but an error sayin hard disk locked appeard on device detection how can o solve this....

Title: hard disk
Post by: Simon on March 13, 2006, 16:44

Can you give us some more information?  Is this a laptop or desktop PC?  Which version of Windows are you using?  Can you boot into safe mode?  Did you install or uninstall anything immediately prior to this happening?  Are you aware of any other changes which may have been made prior to this happening, like a BIOS alteration, perhaps?  I'm sure someone will be able to help you with this, once we have more to go on.  :)

Title: hard disk
Post by: Sandra on March 13, 2006, 16:47

Is this a brand new hard drive that you have just installed ?

Title: hard disk
Post by: Sandra on March 15, 2006, 12:02

Ben replied to me in a PM saying :

"no its a hard disk which i normally use,its  not new"

Please reply in the thread in future Ben so that others can see your reply and possibly come up with a solution.

Is it your main boot drive Ben or is it a slave ?

Have you altered anything in the bios at all ?

Even if you havent been into the bios it may be worth going in and loading bios defaults.

Title: hard disk
Post by: ben21 on March 15, 2006, 12:34

well the bios settings ave rest everything to deafault but am getting the same  error message,but how will the slave  mechanisim work if applied i have not tried,or should  i try to boot from another disk and get all my information,out than fomat it.......

Title: hard disk
Post by: Sandra on March 15, 2006, 13:05

If its locked then I dont think that you would be able to format it.

If it wasnt your boot drive then I was going to sugges tthat you uninstalled it from teh device manager then shut down and physically disconnected it then rebooted without it.
Then if you added it again windows would detect it as new hardware and reinstall it.
That may have sorted it.

As it appears to be your boot drive then thats not an option.

I would definately try and get the information off it somehow, either by making it a slave in your pc, if you have a spare drive that you can install an OS on or taking it to a friends and slaving it on his pc or similar.

What make of hard drive is it, is it SATA or IDE, what size is it and is it almost full ?

Title: hard disk
Post by: Sandra on March 15, 2006, 14:09

I have emailed you a small program called MHD3.exe Ben, along with this text :

I have had a look around for a solution to your locked hard drive problem.
This program may fix it but unfortunately it will wipe everything off your drive !!!

If nothing else works then you may have to use it as a last resort.
You need a 98 boot floppy then extract the exe from this zip and add it to the floppy.
Boot with the floppy and run MHD3 from the A prompt.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have read a little more about this and it seems that when it says its finished, it is best to leave it at the A prompt for another 25 or 30 minutes as it reports its finished before it really has for some reason  :?

There is also apparently a later version of the program v1.1 which may be better but I havent been able to find a download for it yet.

Title: hard disk reply
Post by: ben21 on March 16, 2006, 09:46

well sanddra let me see if it works ,woll get back to you asap,were can i get tha  application from the internet,have a site...

Title: hard disk
Post by: Sandra on March 16, 2006, 11:54

I sent it you as an attachment in an email to the address that you have in your profile.
Did you not receive it ?