Derp, my HTPC won't boot

[at0m]

My HTPC's got 2 SATA HDDs in it, a Seagate Barracuda 750GB and a Caviar Green 1TB. I bought some Caviar Green 2TB drives, wanted to swap the 1TB out, so I backed it up to the 2TB via an eSATA enclosure, popped the case, and swapped the two. Now my HTPC won't boot. All I get is a black screen with blinking command prompt, won't respond to anything. I tried swapping the drives back, reseating the connectors on all of the HDDs in the case, checking my boot order, and running the Windows 7 Startup Repair wizard. Nothing works.

Halp?

[HeK]

Wait, HTPC, Windows 7? Wha?

Dude: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMCbuntu


Otherwise, if you are getting a command prompt, you are booting from something. Disk in your floppy?

[at0m]

No floppy, just 2 HDDs and a SATA Bluray/HD-DVD/DVD+RW drive. There's nothing in the optical drive, and when I disconnect all of the HDDs, I get an invalid or missing system disk error from the BIOS. When the system HDD is plugged in, I get a blinking line.

I know about XBMCbuntu, I tried it and couldn't get it to cooperate with my motherboard, video card, and IR remote drivers. We've been over this, I went with Radeon for my hardware which was a mistake, since their linux drivers suck. I ended up settling on 7 because the other boxes in my house run 7, less of a learning curve for both myself to get filestreaming/sharing working and my gf to use it.

[at0m]

Pulled the system HDD and tried to get it to cooperate with my SATA/IDE-USB adapter, and the drive won't initialize. Doesn't even feel like its spinning up, since I don't hear it nor feel the gyroscopic effect when I move it. Somehow in shifting the HTPC around I killed a drive...? I don't have another spare, other than the Caviar Greens, which I really don't want as a system drive. Sigh.

It's a Barracuda 7200.10, is that one of the ones effected by the firmware glitch?

Looking on their website, they've got the warranty status listed as 'Component', and to contact the place of purchase, motherfuckers. It's probably one of those shitty 30-day refurb deals, I'll have to dig out the sales paperwork for it.

[HeK]

Give it a check: https://apps1.seagate.com/rms_af_srl_chk/

Generally, if the BIOS detects the drive, the controller is in good shape.

Check over the disk with fdisk and make sure it has an active boot partition. Then rewrite the MBR with the Win7 boot disk.

[at0m]

The check comes back with no downloads

I tried repairing it, but the drive doesn't spin up despite being detected in BIOS. Strange as shit. The Windows 7 installer can't see the windows install, either. The more I screw with it the more it sounds like a freak hardware problem, unless I'm missing something.

I'm almost certain I picked this up on a Black Friday deal, too, which means the receipt is long gone. Looks like I bought it from Woot in 2008, time to go back to them and bitch for it not shipping with a real warranty. And their site says it shipped with a 180 day limited warranty, probably because it's a refurb. That's the last time I buy a refurb drive from Woot.

[Kirby]

Refurbs are baaaaaad juju.

[HeK]

Give this a try, see if you luck out: http://support.seagate.com/customer/warr...jsp?form=1

[at0m]

Give this a try, see if you luck out: http://support.seagate.com/customer/warr...jsp?form=1

I did, thats what's coming up saying it was sold as a system component, with no warranty at all. Pissed. Off.

I dropped in a 1TB as a system drive and reinstalled 7 on it, so at least the box is back up and running. I can deal with the drive at my leisure now.