Topic: S.M.A.R.T capable but disabled

[jww41005]

Hello Pals,

My kids' PC is acting up again. Too many downloads.........

The error is in Spanish, which basically means the OS XP won't boot.
When it is turned on at first I see: S.M.A.R.T capable but disabled. It has 2 HDs
I tried booting in safe mode - f8 - but it doesn't work. F2 works for the bios.
I haven't got the XP CDROM
Twiddled the cables and said nice things to it, but nowt

I seem to remember that this is bad, right?

What do you fink.

John

[Simon]

From doing a bit of Googling, I've found out that SMART is a drive diagnostic system, which can be enabled and disabled in the BIOS, and is used to warn of a possible drive problem.  The message is telling you it's disabled, which may, in itself, not necessarily mean that a hard drive is about to fail, but if you were to enable it in the BIOS, you may then get a drive error message.

How long have you left it to boot?  Some of the comments I read seemed to imply that the message could be there for up to 20 minutes, then the machine boots normally.  Obviously, something's not right though, and I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to enable SMART, so I would hold on until Sandra, or someone else good at hardware, sees this and responds. 

[Sandra]

I usually enable the S.M.A.R.T. as it can give you an early warning of a drive failure giving you time to transfer the data before it packs up.

When you try and get into safe mode by pressing F8 do you get a message or does it just go into the boot sequence menu ?
With SATA enabled pcs timing is critical for getting into safe mode, you need to press F8 after the first DOS type screen has come up but before the second one shows.

[jww41005]

Hello,

First of all I don't know for how long this 'capable but disabled' has been appearing.
I left it for over an hour earlier but the error still says that windows won't load.
I typed f8 as fast as I could during boot up, which ended up with the 'windows won't load' error.
I can get into bios, f2
The os is xp.

The PC has 2 HDDs. The smaller one has windows installed on it and I know that it is full. Could that have a negative effect?

Thanks

[Sandra]

Hard drives dont like to be full, always better to keep them below 90% if possible to allow them room to work properly.
However I dont think that would stop you getting into safe mode or normal windows.
Without the XP CD it can be hard to fix faults like this but you could try and use the Mini XP option from Hirens Boot CD that worked for Bev a few weeks back.

See this thread for the link for Hirens download.

http://www.pc-pals.com/smf/index.php?topic=28811.0

I still think that you havent got the timing of pressing F8 right for safe mode. You need to press F8 after the first screen has come and gone and before the second one has loaded fully.

[jww41005]

Hello Sandra,

Thanks for that, but I'm afraid I couldn't get it to work
So, out of desperation I put in the Vista CD that came with my laptop (Don't tell anyone) and it worked.

Thanks again

John

[Sandra]

Alls well that ends well